THE  LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


Miss  Theodora 


A  West  End  Story 


BY 


Helen   Leah   Reed 


BOSTON 
RICHARD    G.    BADGER    6?   CO. 


Copyright,  1898,  by 
Richard  G.  Badger  &  Co. 

All  Righn  Reierved 


The  frontispiece  and  chapter  headings  arejfrom 
drawings  by  Florence  Pearl  England,  the  latter 
being  after  photographs. 


1.702025 


I. 

The  tourist,  with  his  day  or  two  at  a 
down  town  hotel,  calls  Boston  a  city  of 
narrow  streets  and  ancient  graveyards ; 
the  dweller  in  one  of  the  newer  avenues 
is  enthusiastic  about  the  modern  archi 
tecture  and  regular  streets  of  the  Back 
Bay  region.  Yet  neither  of  these  knows 
the  real  Boston,  the  old  West  End,  with 
its  quaint  tree-lined  streets  sloping  from 
the  top  of  Beacon  Hill  toward  the  river. 

Near  the  close  of  any  bright  afternoon, 
walk  from  the  State  House  down  the  hill, 


2  MISS  THEODORA 

pause  half-way,  and,  glancing  back,  note 
the  perfect  Gothic  arch  formed  by  the 
trees  that  line  both  sides  of  Mount  Ver- 
non  Street.  Admire  those  old  houses 
which  have  taken  on  the  rich,  deep  tones 
that  age  so  kindly  imparts  to  brick. 
Then  look  across  the  river  to  the  sun 
just  setting  behind  the  Brookline  hills, — 
and  admit  that  even  in  a  crowded  city  we 
may  catch  glimpses  of  the  picturesque. 

Half-wray  down  one  of  the  quiet,  hilly 
West  End  streets  is  the  house  of  Miss 
Theodora — no,  I  will  not  tell  you  her 
true  name.  If  I  should,  you  would  rec 
ognize  it  at  once  as  that  of  a  great  New 
England  jurist.  This  jurist  was  de 
scended  from  a  long  line  of  scholars, 
whose  devotion  to  letters  had  not  pre 
vented  their  accumulating  a  fair  amount 
of  wealth.  Much  of  this  wealth  had 
fallen  to  the  jurist,  Miss  Theodora's 
father,  with  whom  at  first  everything 
went  well,  and  then  everything  badly. 

It  was  not  entirely  the  great  man's  ex- 


MISS  THEODORA  3 

travagance  that  wrought  the  mischief, 
although  many  stories  were  long  told  of 
his  too  liberal  hospitality  and  lavish  ex 
penditure.  He  came,  however,  of  a  gen 
erous  race ;  it  was  a  cousin  of  his  who  di 
vided  a  small  fortune  between  Harvard 
College  and  the  Provident  Association, 
and  for  more  than  a  century  back  the 
family  name  might  be  found  on  every  list 
of  contributions  to  a  good  cause. 

Yet  it  was  not  extravagance,  but  blind 
faith  in  the  financial  wisdom  of  others,  as 
well  as  an  undue  readiness  to  lend  money 
to  every  man  who  wished  to  borrow  from 
him,  which  brought  to  Miss  Theodora's 
father  the  trouble  that  probably  has 
tened  him  to  his  grave.  When  he  died, 
it  was  found  that  he  had  lost  all  but  a 
fraction  of  a  former  fortune.  His  widow 
survived  him  only  a  few  years,  and  before 
her  death  the  family  had  to  leave  their 
roomy  mansion  on  the  hill,  with  its 
pleasant  garden,  for  a  smaller  house 
farther  down  the  street. 


4  MISS  THEODORA 

Here  Miss  Theodora  tried  to  make  a 
pleasant  home  for  John,  her  brother. 
He  had  just  begun  to  practise  law,  and, 
with  his  talents,  would  undoubtedly  do 
well,  especially  if  he  married  as  he 
should.  Thus,  with  a  woman's  worldli- 
ness  in  things  matrimonial,  reasoned 
Miss  Theodora,  sometimes  even  going  so 
far  as  to  commend  to  John  this  girl  or 
that  among  the  family  connections.  But 
one  day  John  put  an  end  to  all  her  inno 
cent  scheming  by  announcing  his  be 
trothal  to  the  orphan  daughter  of  a 
Plymouth  minister,  "a  girl  barely  pretty, 
and  certainly  poor."  It  was  only  a  half 
consolation  to  reflect  that  Dorothy  had  a 
pedigree  going  back  to  John  Alden  and 
Priscilla. 

Ernest,  John's  boy,  was  just  a  month 
old  when  Sumter  surrendered ;  yet  John 
would  go  to  the  war,  leaving  Dorothy 
and  the  baby  to  the  care  of  his  sister. 
Eagerly  the  two  women  followed  his 
regiment  through  each  campaign,  thank- 


MISS  THEODORA  5 

ful  for  the  bright  and  cheerful  letters  he 
sent  them.  They  bore  bravely  that  aw 
ful  silence  after  Antietam,  until  at  length 
they  knew  that  John  would  never  come 
home  again. 

It  was  simply  of  a  broken  heart  that 
Dorothy  died,  said  every  one,  for  little 
Ernest  was  scarcely  three  years  old  when 
he  was  left  with  no  one  to  care  for  him 
but  Miss  Theodora.  How  she  saved 
and  scrimped  to  give  him  what  he  need 
ed,  I  will  not  say;  but  gradually  her 
attire  took  on  a  quaintness  that  would 
have  been  thought  impossible  for  her 
even  to  favor  in  the  days  of  her  girlhood, 
when  she  had  been  a  critic  of  dress.  She 
never  bought  a  new  gown  now ;  every 
cent  beyond  what  was  required  for  living 
expenses  must  be  saved  for  Ernest. 

Before  the  boy  knew  his  letters,  Miss 
Theodora  was  planning  for  his  career  at 
Harvard.  He  should  be  graduated  at 
the  head  of  his  class.  With  such  a 
father,  with  such  a  grandfather,  Ernest 


6  MISS  THEODORA 

certainly  must  be  a  great  man.  The 
family  glory  would  be  renewed  in  him. 

Little  by  little  Miss  Theodora  with 
drew  from  the  world.  She  had  not 
cared  for  gayety  in  her  younger  days; 
she  hardly  missed  it  now;  yet  she  was 
not  neglected  by  her  relatives  and  old 
friends  —  even  the  most  fashionable 
called  on  her  once  a  year.  These  distant 
cousins  and  formal  acquaintances  had 
little  personal  interest  in  Miss  Theodora. 
Their  cards  were  left  from  respect  to  the 
memory  of  the  distinguished  jurist 
rather  than  from  any  desire  to  brighten 
the  life  of  his  daughter. 

If  Miss  Theodora's  invitations  grew 
fewer  and  fewer,  she  herself  was  to 
blame,  for  she  seldom  accepted  an  invi 
tation,  even  to  luncheon,  nor  confided  to 
any  one  that  pride  forbade  her  to  accept 
hospitalities  which  circumstances  pre 
vented  her  returning. 


II. 

Although  Miss  Theodora  disliked  vis 
iting,  every  summer  she  and  Ernest 
spent  a  month  at  Nahant  with  her  cousin, 
Sarah  Somerset.  She  herself  would 
have  preferred  the  quiet  independence  of 
a  New  Hampshire  country  farm,  but  she 


thought  it  her  duty  to  give  Ernest  this 
yearly  opportunity  of  seeing  his  relatives 
in  the  intimacy  possible  only  at  their 
summer  homes.  This  was  before  the 
days  of  Beverly's  popularity,  when 
almost  every  one  at  Nahant  was  cousin 
to  every  one  else.  Even  the  people  at 
the  boarding  houses  belonged  to  the 
little  group  held  to  have  an  almost  inher 
ent  right  to  the  rocky  peninsula. 

Both  the  little  boy,  therefore,  and  Miss 
Theodora  were  made  much  of  by  their 
kinsfolk;  and  the  child  thought  these 
summer  days  the  happiest  of  the  year. 

In  other  ways  Miss  Theodora  was  oc 
casionally  remembered  by  her  relatives. 
Once  she  was  asked  to  spend  a  whole 
year  in  Europe  as  chaperone  to  two  or 
three  girls,  her  distant  cousins.  Even  if 
she  could  have  made  up  her  mind  to 
leave  Ernest,  I  doubt  whether  she  would 
have  accepted  the  invitation.  She  had 
almost  determined  never  to  go  abroad 
again,  preferring  to  hold  sacred  the  jour- 


MISS  THEODORA  9 

ney  that  she  and  her  parents  and  John 
had  made  two  or  three  years  before  their 
troubles  began. 

For  the  most  part,  then,  Miss  Theo 
dora  repelled  all  attempts  at  intimacy 
made  by  her  relatives.  Unreasonable 
though  she  knew  herself  to  be,  she  be 
lieved  that  she  could  never  care  so  much 
for  her  cousins  since  they  had  all  in  such 
curious  fashion — like  swallows  in  winter 
— begun  to  migrate  southward  to  the 
Back  Bay.  At  first  she  felt  as  bitter  as 
was  possible  for  a  person  of  her  amiable 
disposition,  when  she  saw  people  whom 
no  necessity  impelled  leaving  their  spa 
cious  dwellings  on  the  Hill  for  the  more 
contracted  houses  on  the  flat  land  be 
yond  the  Public  Garden. 

Yet  if  Miss  Theodora  pitied  her  de 
generate  kin,  how  much  more  did  they 
pity  her!  "Poor  Theodora,"  some  of 
them  would  say.  "I  don't  see  how  she 
manages  to  get  along  at  all.  If  she  sold 
that  house,  with  the  interest  of  the 


io  MISS  THEODORA 

money  she  and  Ernest  could  board  com 
fortably  somewhere.  Even  as  it  is,  she 
might  let  a  room  or  two ;  but  no — I  sup 
pose  that  would  hardly  do.  Well,  she 
must  be  dreadfully  pinched." 

Notwithstanding  these  well  meant 
fears,  Miss  Theodora  got  along  very 
well.  The  greatest  sacrifice  of  pride  that 
she  had  to  make  came  when  she  found 
that  she  must  send  Ernest  to  a  public 
school.  Yet  even  this  hardship  might 
have  been  worse.  "It  isn't  as  if  he  were 
a  girl,  you  know,"  she  said  half  apolo 
getically  to  Sarah  Somerset.  "Although 
he  may  make  a  few  undesirable  acquaint 
ances,  he  will  have  nothing  to  do  with 
them  when  he  goes  to  Harvard."  For 
Miss  Theodora's  plans  for  Ernest 
reached  far  into  the  future,  even  beyond 
his  college  days,  and  she  must  save  all 
that  was  possible  out  of  her  meagre  in 
come. 

Public  or  private  school  was  all  the 
same  to  Ernest;  or  perhaps  his  prefer- 


MISS  THEODORA  11 

ence,  if  he  had  been  asked  to  express  it, 
would  have  been  decidedly  for  the  big 
brick  schoolhouse,  with  its  hosts  of  boys. 
What  matter  if  many  of  these  boys  were 
rough  and  unkempt.  Among  them  all 
he  could  always  find  some  suitable  com 
panions.  His  refined  nature  chose  the 
best ;  and  if  the  best  in  this  case  did  not 
mean  rich  boys  or  those  of  well-known 
names,  it  meant  boys  of  a  refinement  not 
so  very  unlike  that  possessed  by  Ernest 
himself. 

One  day  he  came  home  from  school 
later  than  usual,  with  his  eye  black  and 
blue,  and  one  of  the  pockets  of  his  little 
jacket  hanging  ripped  and  torn. 

"Why,  what  is  the  matter,  Ernest?" 
cried  his  aunt;  "have  you  been  fight- 
ing?" 

"Well,  not  exactly  fighting,  but  kind 
of  fighting,"  he  replied,  and  "kind  of 
fighting"  became  one  of  the  joking 
phrases  between  aunt  and  nephew  when 
ever  the  latter  professed  uncertainty  as 


12  MISS  THEODORA 

to  his  attitude  on  any  particular  ques 
tion. 

"You  see,  it  was  this  way,"  and  he  be 
gan  to  explain  the  black  eye  and  the  torn 
pocket. 

"There  were  two  big  mickies — Irish 
you  know — bothering  two  little  niggers 
— oh,  excuse  me!  black  boys — at  the 
corner  of  our  school ;  so  I  just  pitched  in 
and  gave  it  to  them  right  and  left.  But 
they  were  bigger  than  me,  and  maybe  I'd 
have  got  whipped  if  it  hadn't  been  for 
Ben  Bruce.  He  just  ran  down  the 
school  steps  like  a  streak  of  lightning, 
and  you  should  have  seen  those  bullies 
slink  away.  They  muttered  something 
about  doing  Ben  up  some  other  day ;  but 
I  guess  they'll  never  dare  touch  him." 

Now,  Ben  Bruce,  two  or  three  classes 
ahead  of  Ernest  in  school,  was  a  hero  in 
the  eyes  of  the  younger  boy.  Ben  was 
famous  as  an  athlete,  and  Ernest,  in 
schoolboy  fashion,  could  never  have 
hoped  for  an  intimacy  with  one  so 


MISS  THEODORA  13 

greatly  his  superior  in  years  and  strength 
had  not  this  chance  encounter  thrown 
them  together.  Ben  appreciated  the 
younger  boy's  manliness,  and  the  two 
walked  together  down  the  hill,  as  a  rear 
guard  to  the  little  negroes.  The  latter, 
too  much  amazed  at  the  whole  encoun 
ter  even  to  speak,  soon  ran  down  a  side 
street  to  their  homes,  and  Ben  and 
Ernest,  if  they  did  not  say  a  great  deal  to 
each  other  at  that  time,  felt  that  a  real 
friendship  had  begun  between  them. 

Miss  Theodora  heard  Ernest's  account 
of  the  affair  with  mixed  feelings.  She 
was  glad  that  her  boy  had  shown  himself 
true  to  the  principles  of  an  Abolition 
family;  yet  she  wished  that  circum 
stances  had  made  a  contact  with  rough 
boys  impossible  for  him.  She  was  not 
altogether  certain  that  she  approved  the 
intimacy  with  Ben,  whose  family  be 
longed  to  an  outside  circle  of  West  End- 
ers  with  which  she  had  hardly  come  into 
contact  herself. 


14  MISS  THEODORA 

An  expression  of  her  misgivings  drew 
forth  a  remonstrance  from  Miss  Chatter- 
wits  :  "Why,  you  know  Ben  Bruce's 
father's  grandfather  was  on  General 
Washington's  staff;  they've  got  his  sword 
and  a  painting  in  their  front  parlor."  As 
Miss  Chatterwits  was  an  authority  as  to 
the  biography  of  the  meanest  as  well  as 
the  most  important  resident  on  the  Hill, 
her  approbation  of  the  Bruces  may  have 
inclined  Miss  Theodora  toward  Ben. 
Yet,  had  he  had  no  other  recommenda 
tion,  the  boy's  own  good  manners  would 
have  gone  far  to  impress  Miss  Theodora 
in  his  favor. 

Ernest  never  knew  just  how  meagre 
his  aunt's  income  was.  He  thought  it 
chiefly  lack  of  taste  that  led  her  to  wear 
those  queer,  scant  gowns.  Year  after 
year  she  drew  upon  an  apparently  inex 
haustible  store  of  changeable  silks  and 
queer  plaided  stuffs.  Then  she  wore  lit 
tle  tippets  and  small,  flat  hats,  and  in 
summer  long  black  lace  mitts,  "like  no- 


MISS  THEODORA  15 

body  else  wears,"  sighed  poor  little  Er 
nest  one  day,  as  he  asked  his  aunt  why 
she  never  bought  anything  new. 

Yet  even  Miss  Theodora's  limited 
purse  might  occasionally  have  afforded 
her  a  new  gown,  had  she  not  been  well 
content  with  what  she  already  had.  She 
could  not  wish  more,  she  reasoned,  than 
to  have  her  old-fashioned  garments  re 
modeled  from  year  to  year  by  good  Miss 
Chatterwits. 

Miss  Chatterwits,  who  had  sewed  in 
the  family  from  the  days  of  Miss  Theo 
dora's  childhood,  lived  in  one  of  those 
curious  short  lanes  off  Revere  street.  It 
was  a  great  comfort  to  Miss  Theodora  to 
have  her  come  for  a  day's  sewing  with 
her  queer  green  workbag  dangling  from 
her  arm,  with  her  funny  little  corkscrew 
curls  bobbing  at  every  motion  of  her 
funny  little  head.  While  she  sewed, 
Miss  Chatterwits  kept  her  nimble  tongue 
at  work,  lamenting  the  changes  that  had 
come  to  the  old  West  End.  She  knew 


16  MISS  THEODORA 

the  region  well,  and  understood  the  dif 
ference  between  the  old  residents  and 
those  newer  people  who  were  crowding 
in. 

"It's  shameful  that  the  Somersets 
should  think  so  little  of  themselves  as  to 
move  from  Chestnut  to  Beacon  Street; 
and  their  new  house  isn't  even  opposite 
the  Public  Garden,  but  away  up  there 
beyond  Berkeley  Street.  How  aping 
the  names  of  those  Back  Bay  streets  are, 
— Berkeley  and  Clarendon  and  Dart 
mouth, — as  though  American  names 
wouldn't  have  done  better  than  those 
English  imitations !  Well,  Miss  Theo 
dora,  we  have  Pinckney  and  Revere 
named  after  good  American  men,  and 
Spruce  and  Cedar  for  good  American 
trees.  I  wouldn't  live  on  one  of  those 
new-fangled  streets,  not  if  they'd  give  it 
to  me." 

Then  Miss  Theodora,  almost  driven  to 
apologize  for  her  misguided  relatives,  lit 
tle  as  she  sympathized  with  them  herself, 


MISS  THEODORA  17 

would  reply  in  words  that  she  must  have 
seen  in  some  of  the  newspapers :  "Well, 
I  suppose  the  growth  of  the  city's  popu 
lation  makes  it  necessary  for — " 

"Fudge !"  Miss  Chatterwits  would  in 
terrupt,  "the  West  End  seems  to  have 
room  enough  for  lodging  and  boarding 
house  keepers ;  and  I  guess  it's  big 
enough  for  true  Boston  folks.  It  just 
makes  me  furious  to  see  "Rooms  to  Let," 
""Table  Board,  $3.50  per  week,"  stuck  up 
in  every  window  on  some  streets.  Good 
ness  knows,  I  hope  the  Somersets  like 
their  neighbors  out  there  on  the  Back 
Bay.  I  hear  anybody  with  money 
enough  can  buy  a  house  there."  And  a 
tear  seemed  ready 'to  fall  from  her  eyes. 


III. 

Ernest,  himself,  grew  up  without  any 
social  prejudices.  His  aunt  often  won 
dered  at  this,  yet,  like  many  sensible  peo 
ple,  she  did  not  try  to  impress  him  with 
her  own  views.  As  one  by  one  the 
dwelling  houses  on  Charles  Street  were 
changed  into  shops,  he  only  rejoiced 
that  Miss  Theodora  wouldn't  have  to 
send  so  far  for  her  groceries  and  pro 
visions.  But  Miss  Theodora  drew 
the  line  here.  She  had  always  been 
able  to  go  to  the  market  every  day, 
and  no  thrifty  housewife  needs  a  pro- 


MISS  THEODORA  19 

vision  shop  under  her  very  nose,  she 
said. 

Her  one  exception  in  favor  of  neigh 
borhood  shopping  was  made  for  the  little 
thread  and  needle  shop  on  the  corner  be 
low  her  house.  Even  a  person  who 
doesn't  have  many  new  gowns  occasion 
ally  needs  tapes  and  needles,  and  may 
find  it  convenient  to  buy  them  near  at 
hand. 

This  shop  was  a  delight  to  Ernest,  and 
in  the  days  when  his  chin  hardly  reached 
the  level  of  the  counter,  he  loved  to  stand 
and  gaze  at  the  rows  of  jars  filled  with 
variegated  sticks  of  candy,  jaw-breakers 
and  pickled  limes;  for  the  two  maiden 
ladies  who  kept  tne  shop  sold  many 
things  besides  needles  and  thread.  In 
the  little  glass  show-case,  in  addition  to 
mittens  and  scissors  and  an  occasional 
beautiful  fan,  and  heaps  of  gay  marbles, 
was  a  pile  of  highly-colored  story  books, 
"The  Tale  of  Goody  Two  Shoes"  and 
others  of  that  ilk,  and  mysterious  look- 


20  MISS  THEODORA 

ing  sheets  of  paper,  which  needed  only 
the  manipulation  of  skilful  scissors  to 
change  them  into  life-like  paper  dolls 
with  elaborate  wardrobes.  Ernest,  of 
course,  took  little  interest  in  the  paper 
dolls, — he  bought  chiefly  marbles;  but 
his  cousin,  Kate  Digby,  whenever  she 
was  permitted  to  spend  a  day  at  the 
West  End,  was  a  devoted  patron  of  the 
little  shop,  and  saved  all  her  pennies  to 
increase  her  household  of  dolls.  In 
deed,  she  confided  to  Ernest  that  when 
she  grew  up  she  was  going  to  have  a 
shop  just  like  the  one  kept  by  the  Misses 
Bascom.  If  Mrs.  Stuart  Digby  had 
heard  her  say  this,  she  would  have  won 
dered  where  in  the  world  her  daughter 
had  acquired  a  taste  for  anything  so  ordi 
nary  as  trade. 

A  block  or  two  away  from  the  thread 
and  needle  shop  was  a  shop  that  Miss 
Theodora  abhorred.  Within  they  sold 
every  kind  of  thing  calculated  to  draw 
the  stray  pennies  from  the  pockets  of  the 


MISS  THEODORA  21 

school  children  who  passed  it  daily.  Its 
windows,  with  their  display  of  gaudy  and 
vulgar  illustrated  papers,  gave  her  posi 
tive  pain.  A  generation  ago  ladies  had 
not  acquired  the  habit  of  rushing  into 
print  with  every  matter  of  reform ;  other 
wise  Miss  Theodora  might  have  sent  a 
letter  to  the  newspaper,  signed  "Pruden- 
tia,"  or  something  of  that  kind,  deplor 
ing  the  fact  that  a  shop  like  this  should 
be  allowed  to  exist  near  a  school,  draw 
ing  pennies  from  the  pockets  of  the 
school  children,  at  the  same  time  that  it 
vitiated  their  artistic  sense. 

Ernest,  as  I  have  said,  grew  up  without 
marked  local  or  social  prejudices.  Many 
of  his  spare  pennies  went  into  the  money 
drawer  of  the  corner  shop,  and  much  of 
his  spare  time  he  spent  with  the  work 
men  at  the  cabinet-makers'  near  by.  For 
little  workshops  were  beginning  to  ap 
pear  in  the  neighborhood  of  lower 
Charles  Street,  and  some  of  their  pro 
prietors  had  cut  away  the  front  of  an  old 


22  MISS  THEODORA 

house,  in  order  to  build  a  window  to  dis 
play  their  wares. 

Ernest  loved  to  gaze  in  at  the  shining 
faucets  in  the  plumber's  window,  and 
horrified  his  aunt  by  announcing  one 
day  that  when  he  was  a  man  he  meant  to 
be  either  a  plumber  or  a  cabinet-maker. 
Among  them  all  he  preferred  the  cabi 
net-maker's.  Everything  going  on  there 
interested  him,  and  the  workmen,  glad  to 
answer  his  questions,  showed  him  ways 
of  doing  things  which  he  put  into  prac 
tice  at  home. 

For  Miss  Theodora  had  given  Ernest 
a  basement  room  to  work  in,  stipulating 
only  that  he  should  not  bring  more  than 
three  boys  at  a  time  into  the  house  to 
share  his  labors.  His  joy  was  unbound 
ed  one  Christmas  when  his  cousin,  Rich 
ard  Somerset,  sent  him  a  turning  lathe. 
Almost  the  first  use  to  which  he  put  it 
was  to  make  a  footstool,  with  delicately 
tapering  legs,  for  his  aunt's  birthday. 
He  tied  it  up  in  brown  paper  himself, 


MISS  THEODORA  23 

and  wound  a  great  string  about  it  with 
many  knots. 

"Law !"  said  Diantha,  who  stood  by  as 
Miss  Theodora  slowly  untied  the  bulky 
package,  "what's  them  boys  been  up  to 
now?  I  believe  it's  some  mischief." 

"Now,  old  Di,  you're  mean,"  cried 
Ernest,  dancing  around  in  excitement  in 
the  narrow  hall-way  outside  the  bedroom 
door. 

But  Miss  Theodora,  as  she  bent  over 
the  package,  tugging  at  the  strings, 
caught  sight  of  some  sprawling  letters 
that  resolved  themselves  into  "A  birth 
day  Present  from  your  LOVEING 
nephew ;"  so,  shaking  her  head  at  Dian 
tha,  she  responded,  loudly  enough  for 
Ernest  to  hear,  and  with  no  comment  on 
the  bad  spelling,  "Oh,  no,  it's  a  beautiful 
present  from  Ernest."  And  then  Ernest 
ran  in  and  undid  the  rest  of  the  knots, 
and,  setting  the  footstool^  triumphantly 
on  its  four  legs  on  the  floor,  said :  "Now, 
you'll  always  use  it,  won't  you,  Aunt 
Teddy?" 


24  MISS  THEODORA 

Of  course  Miss  Theodora,  as  she 
kissed  him,  promised  to  use,  and  kept 
her  promise,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
little  footstool — less  comfortable  than 
her  well-worn  carpet  hassock — wasn't 
exactly  steady  on  its  feet.  But  although 
she  so  thoroughly  appreciated  Ernest's 
thoughtfulness,  Miss  Theodora  did  not 
regard  the  footstool  with  absolute  pleas 
ure.  She  was  by  no  means  sure  that 
she  approved  of  Ernest's  skill  in  handi 
crafts.  She  wondered  •sometimes  whether 
she  ought  to  permit  a  probable  lawyer  to 
spend  so  much  energy  in  work  which 
could  hardly  go  toward  helping  him  in 
his  profession.  Yet,  after  all,  she  hadn't 
the  heart  to  interfere  with  Ernest's  me 
chanical  tastes,  when  she  saw  that  grati 
fying  them  gave  him  so  much  pleasure. 
She  never  forgot  her  fright  one  day  on 
the  Nahant  boat,  when  Ernest,  barely 
seven  years  old,  was  missing,  and  she 
found  him  only  after  a  long  search  at  the 
door  of  the  engine  room. 


MISS  THEODORA  25 

"You'd  ought  to  be  an  engineer  when 
you're  grown  up,"  she  heard  a  gruff 
voice  say,  while  Ernest  meekly  replied: 
"Well,  I'd  like  to,  but  I've  got  to  be  a 
lawyer." 

She  did  not  scold  Ernest  as  she  took 
his  hand  to  lead  him  up  stairs,  and  she 
even  lingered  while  he  tried  to  put  her 
in  possession  of  all  his  own  knowledge. 

"This  gentleman,"  he  said  apologeti 
cally,  "has  been  explaining  his  engine  to 
me,"  and  the  "gentleman,"  rubbing  a 
light  streak  across  his  sooty  face,  turned 
to  her  with  a  sincere,  "That  there  boy  of 
yours  has  a  big  head,  ma'am,  for  ma 
chinery,  and,  begging  your  pardon,  if  I 
was  you  I'd  put  him  out  to  a  machinist 
when  he's  a  little  bigger." 

The  plainness  of  Miss  Theodora's 
dress  may  have  placed  her  in  this  man's 
eye  on  the  plane  of  those  people  who 
regularly  sent  their  children  to  learn 
trades.  Although  in  her  mind  she  re 
sented  the  suggestion,  she  listened  atten- 


26  MISS  THEODORA 

lively  to  Ernest  as  he  tried,  with  glowing 
cheek  and  rapid  tongue,  to  explain  the 
various  parts  of  the  engine.  If  Miss 
Theodora  never  perhaps  had  more  than 
a  vague  idea  of  the  functions  of  piston 
and  valve  and  the  wonders  of  the  gov 
ernor,  over  which  Ernest  grew  so  elo 
quent,  she  was  at  least  a  sympathetic 
listener  in  this  as  in  all  other  things  that 
he  cared  for. 


IV. 

When  it  came  to  machinery,  Ernest 
found  his  aunt  much  more  sympathetic 
than  his  usual  confidante,  Kate  Digby. 
As  years  went  on,  the  childish  compan 
ionship  between  the  children  deepened 
into  friendship.  They  began  to  confide 
to  each  other  their  dreams  for  the  future. 
Kate  modelled  herself  somewhat  on  the 


28  MISS  THEODORA 

accounts  handed  down  of  a  certain  an 
cestress  of  hers  whose  portrait  hung  in 
the  stairway  of  her  father's  house. 

The  portrait  was  a  copy  of  one  thinly 
painted  and  flat  looking,  done  by  an  ob 
scure  seventeenth  century  artist.  It 
showed  a  very  young  girl  dressed  in 
gray,  with  a  white  kerchief  folded  around 
her  slim  neck,  and  with  her  thin  little 
wrists  meekly  crossed  in  front.  Whether 
her  hair  was  abundant  or  not  no  one 
could  tell,  for  an  old-womanish  cap  with 
narrow  ruffle  so  covered  her  head  that 
only  a  faint  blonde  aureole  could  be  seen 
beneath  it.  Colorless  though  this  por 
trait  seemed  at  first  sight,  longer  study 
brought  out  a  depth  in  the  clear  gray 
eye,  a  firmness  in  the  small  pink  mouth, 
which  consorted  well  with  the  stories 
told  of  this  little  Puritan's  bravery. 

One  of  the  youngest  of  the  children 
entering  Massachusetts  Bay  on  Win- 
throp's  fleet,  the  little  Mercy  had  been 
the  pet  of  a  Puritan  household.  Mar- 


MISS  THEODORA  29 

rying  early,  she  had  gone  from  her  fath 
er's  comfortable  house  in  Boston  to  live 
in  the  country  forty  miles  away,  a  region 
remote  and  almost  on  the  borders  of 
civilization  in  those  days.  Not  mere 
rumor  but  veritable  records  have  told 
the  story  of  the  fierce  attack  of  the  sav 
ages  on  that  secluded  dwelling,  of  the 
murder  of  husband  and  man  servant,  of 
the  flight  of  the  wife  and  little  children, 
and  of  their  final  rescue  at  the  very  mo 
ment  when  the  Indians  had  overtaken 
them, — a  rescue,  however,  not  accom 
plished  until  one  of  the  children  had 
been  killed  by  an  arrow,  while  the 
mother  pierced  through  the  arm,  was 
forced  to  drop  the  gun  with  which  she 
held  off  her  assailants. 

"Just  think  of  her  being  so  brave  and 
shooting  like  that !"  Kate  would  say  to 
Ernest.  "I  admire  her  more  than  any  of 
my  great-great-great-grandmothers  — ~ 
whichever  of  the  'greats'  she  was.  And 
then  she  brought  up  all  her  children  so 


30  MISS  THEODORA 

beautifully,  with  almost  nothing  to  live 
on,  so  that  every  one  of  them  became 
somebody.  I'm  always  delighted  when 
people  tell  me  I  look  like  her." 

"Well,  you  don't  look  like  her,"  said 
Ernest,  truthfully.  "If  you  looked  as 
flat  and  fady  as  that  you  wouldn't  look 
like  much.  Besides,  I  don't  like  a  wom 
an's  shooting  and  picking  off  the  red 
skins  the  way  she  did.  Of  course,"  in 
response  to  Kate's  look  of  surprise,  "it 
was  all  right ;  she  had  to  save  herself  and 
the  children ;  but  some  way  it  don't  seem 
the  kind  of  thing  for  a  woman  to  do! 
Now,  I  like  her  because  she  wouldn't  let 
her  oldest  son  go  back  to  England  and 
have  a  title.  You  see,  her  husband's 
father  had  cast  him  off  for  being  a 
Puritan." 

"Oh,  yes,  I  know,"  responded  Kate. 
"But  I  wish  she  had  let  him  take  the 
title.  I'd  like  to  be  related  to  a  lord." 

Kate  and  Ernest  were  no  longer  little 
children  when  this  particular  conversa- 


MISS  THEODORA  31 

tion  took  place ;  but  its  substance  had 
come  up  between  them  many  a  time  be 
fore.  Yet  Ernest  always  held  to  the 
more  democratic  position ;  and  as  years 
went  by  his  acquaintance  with  Ben 
Bruce  intensified  his  democratic  feeling. 
No  one  recognized  more  clearly  than 
Miss  Theodora  this  tendency  of  Ernest's, 
and  she  questioned  long  whether  she  was 
doing  what  John  would  have  approved 
in  sending  him  to  a  school  where  he 
must  mingle  with  his  social  inferiors.  In 
John's  day  public  schools  had  been  dif 
ferent. 

An  unguarded  expression  of  these 
feelings  of  hers  one  evening  at  the 
Digbys'  led  to  an  offer  from  Stuart 
Digby  to  share  his  son's  tutor  with 
Ernest,  that  the  two  boys  might  prepare 
for  Harvard  together.  Now,  the  idea  of 
a  tutor  was  almost  as  unpleasant  to  Miss 
Theodora  as  the  thought  of  the  undesir 
able  acquaintances  that  Ernest  might 
make  at  a  public  school.  In  the  choice 


32  MISS  THEODORA 

between  unrepublican  aristocracy  and 
simple  democracy  she  almost  inclined  to 
the  latter ;  but  Stuart  Digby,  her  second 
cousin,  had  been  John's  bosom  friend, 
and  she  could  not  bring  herself  to  refuse 
the  well-meant  offer.  It  was  Ernest 
who  rebelled. 

"I  don't  want  to  go  to  college  at  all. 
I  hate  Latin;  I  won't  waste  time  on 
Greek.  I  detest  that  namby-pamby 
Ralph.  All  he  cares  for  is  to  walk  down 
Beacon  Street  with  the  girls.  He  don't 
know  a  force  pump  from  a  steam  en 
gine  !" 

But  Miss  Theodora,  though  tearful — 
for  she  hated  to  oppose  him — was  firm ; 
and  for  three  years  the  boy  went  down 
the  Hill  and  across  the  Garden  to  recite 
his  lessons  with  Ralph.  Out  of  school 
he  saw  as  little  as  he  could  of  Ralph. 
His  time  was  spent  chiefly  with  Ben 
Bruce.  Ben's  father  kept  a  small  retail 
shop  somewhere  down  near  Court 
Street,  and  his  family  lived  in  a  little 


MISS  THEODORA  33 

house  at  the  top  of  the  hill, — a  little 
house  that  never  had  been  meant  for  any 
but  people  of  limited  means. 

Yet  from  the  roof  of  the  house  there 
was  a  view  such  as  no  one  at  the  Back 
Bay  ever  dreamed  of ;  for  past  the  slop 
ing  streets  near  by  one  could  gaze  on  the 
river  bounded  like  a  lake  by  marshy  low 
lands  and  the  high  sea  walls,  which,  with 
the  distant  hills,  the  nearer  factory  chim 
neys,  even  the  gray  walls  of  the  neigh 
boring  County  Jail,  on  a  dark  day  or 
bright  day,  formed  a  beautiful  scene. 

There  in  that  little  room  of  Ben's  Er 
nest  often  opened  his  heart  to  his  friend 
more  freely  than  to  his  aunt.  Ben,  con 
siderably  Ernest's  senior,  had  entered 
the  Institute  of  Technology — in  boys' 
language,  "Tech" — soon  after  Ernest 
himself  had  begun  to  study  with  Ralph's 
tutor,  and  Ernest  frankly  envied  his 
friend's  opportunity  for  studying  science. 


In  his  boyish  way  Ernest  enjoyed 
life.  The  Somersets,  the  Digbys  and 
the  rest  made  much  of  him,  and  at  the 
Friday  evening  dancing  class  he  was  a 
favorite.  Had  he  been  a  few  years  older 
the  mothers  might  have  objected  to  his 


MISS  THEODORA  35 

popularity.  A  penniless  boy  attending 
the  Friday  evening  dancing  class  is  not 
old  enough  to  be  regarded  as  a  danger 
ous  detrimental,  and  he  may  receive  the 
adoration,  expressive  though  silent,  of 
half  a  dozen  little  maids  in  white  frocks 
and  pink  sashes,  without  encountering 
rebuffs  from  their  mammas  when  he 
steps  up  to  ask  them  to  dance.  In  this 
respect  fifteen  has  a  great  advantage 
over  twenty,  emphasized,  too,  by  the  fact 
that  fifteen  has  not  yet  learned  his  own 
deficiency,  while  twenty  is  apt  to  be  all 
too  conscious  of  it. 

Children's  parties  had  been  within  Er 
nest's  reach  even  before  the  doors  of 
Papanti's  opened  to  him.  They  were  a 
friendly  people  on  the  Hill  and  no  birth 
day  party  was  counted  a  success  without 
the  presence  of  Ernest.  Simple  enough 
these  affairs  were,  the  entertainment, 
round  games  like  "Hunt  the  Button," 
and  "Going  to  Jerusalem,"  and  "Lon 
don's  Burning,"  the  refreshment,  a  light 


36  MISS  THEODORA 

supper  of  bread  and  butter  and  home 
made  cakes,  with  raspberry  vinegar  and 
lemonade  as  an  extra  treat. 

Miss  Theodora  herself  did  not  take 
part  in  the  social  festivities  of  the  neigh 
borhood,  although  her  silver  spoons  and 
even  pieces  of  her  best  china  were  occa 
sionally  lent  to  add  to  the  splendor  of 
some  one's  tea  table.  Mrs.  Fetchum  was 
always  anxious  to  make  a  good  impres 
sion  on  the  neighbors  whom  she  some 
times  asked  to  tea.  Especially  desirous 
was  she  to  have  her  table  glitter  with  sil 
ver  and  glass  when  Miss  Chatterwits  was 
one  of  her  guests.  Since  Miss  Chatter- 
wits  knew  only  too  well  Mrs.  Fetchum's 
humble  origin  as  the  daughter  of  a  petty 
West  End  shoe-seller,  the  latter  could 
never,  like  the  little  seamstress,  talk  of 
bygone  better  days  and  loss  of  position. 
She  could  only  aspire  to  get  even  with 
her  by  offering  her  occasionally  a  ple 
thoric  hospitality,  in  which  a  superabun 
dance  of  food  and  a  dazzling  array  of  sil- 


MISS  THEODORA  37 

ver  and  china  were  the  chief  elements. 
Miss  Chatterwits  had  long  suspected  that 
much  of  this  silver  was  borrowed ;  but 
she  had  never  dared  hint  her  suspicions 
to  Mrs.  Fetchum,  and  the  latter  held  up 
her  head  with  a  pride  that  could  not 
have  been  surpassed  had  she  been  dow 
ered  with  a  modern  bride's  stock  of  wed 
ding  presents.  A  day  or  two  after  a  tea 
party  at  which  she  had  been  unusually 
condescending  to  Miss  Chatterwits,  she 
ran  across  the  street  to  return  the  bor 
rowed  spoons  to  Miss  Theodora.  It 
was  dusk  as  she  entered  the  little  door 
way,  and  she  hastily  thrust  the  package 
into  the  hands  of  some  one  standing  in 
the  narrow  hall,  Miss  Theodora  as  she 
thought,  whispering  loudly  as  she  did 
so:  "Don't  tell  Miss  Chatterwits  I  bor 
rowed  the  spoons."  For  she  knew  that 
the  seamstress  had  been  sewing  for  Miss 
Theodora  that  day,  and  she  wasn't  quite 
sure  that  the  latter  realized  that  the  bor 
rowing  must  be  kept  secret. 


38  MISS  THEODORA 

"It  gave  me  quite  a  turn,"  she  said  as 
she  told  Mr.  Fetchum  about  it.  "It 
gave  me  quite  a  turn  when  I  found  that 
it  was  Miss  Chatterwits ;  but  I  never  let 
on  I  knew  it  was  her,  and  I  turned  about 
as  quick  as  I  could.  Only  the  next  time 
I  set  foot  out  of  this  house  I'll  be  sure 
I  have  my  glasses." 

It  was  hard  to  tell  which  of  the  two 
had  the  best  of  this  chance  encounter. 
Mrs.  Fetchum  consoled  herself  for  the 
carelessness  by  reflecting  on  the  pres 
ence  of  mind  that  had  kept  her  from  ac 
knowledging  her  humiliation;  and  Miss 
Chatterwits  gloated  over  the  fact  that  she 
had  caught  Mrs.  Fetchum  in  a  peccadillo 
she  had  long  suspected  —  borrowing 
Miss  Theodora's  silver. 

In  his  early  years  Ernest  had  been  a 
neighborly  little  fellow,  and,  alone  or 
with  his  aunt,  would  lift  his  hat  to  a 
woman,  old  or  young,  easily  winning  for 
himself  the  name  of  "little  gentleman." 
He  wore  out  his  shoes  in  astonishingly 


MISS  THEODORA  39 

quick  time  playing-  hopscotch  on  the 
hilly  sidewalks  with  the  boys  and  girls 
who  lived  near,  while  Kate,  to  whom  this 
sport  was  forbidden,  sitting  on  the  door 
steps,  looked  enviously  on.  Willingly 
would  she  have  exchanged  her  soft  kid 
shoes  for  the  coarse  copper-toed  boots 
of  Tommy  Fetchum,  had  it  only  been 
permitted  her  to  hop  across  on  one  foot 
and  kick  the  stone  from  one  big  square 
to  another  chalked  out  so  invitingly  on 
the  uneven  bricks. 

But  Mrs.  Stuart  Digby,  although  will 
ing  enough  to  let  Kate  visit  Miss  Theo 
dora,  made  it  a  rule — and  no  one  dared 
break  a  rule  of  hers — that  Kate  was 
never  to  play  on  the  street  with  the  chil 
dren  of  the  neighborhood.  Yet  as  she 
sat  sadly  in  her  corner,  Kate,  often  re 
ferred  to  for  her  opinion  on  disputed 
points,  at  last  came  to  have  a  forlorn 
pride  in  her  position  as  umpire. 

At  length  there  came  a  time  when 
Ernest's  interests  in  the  street  games 


40  MISS  THEODORA 

waned.  His  former  playmates  saw  little 
of  him.  He  neglected  the  boys  and  girls 
with  whom  he  had  once  played  tag  and 
hopscotch,  and  some  of  the  neighbors, 
especially  Mrs.  Fetchum,  said  that  he 
was  growing  "stuck  up."  Miss  Theo 
dora  hardly  knew  her  neighbors  by  sight ; 
for  it  was  one  of  the  evidences  of  the  de 
cadence  of  the  region  that  the  houses 
changed  tenants  frequently,  and  furni 
ture  vans  were  often  standing  in  front  of 
some  of  the  houses  near  Miss  Theo 
dora's. 

Mrs.  Fetchum  was  a  permanent  neigh 
bor.  She  had  lived  in  the  street  longer 
even  than  Miss  Theodora.  She  always 
called  on  new  comers,  and  never  failed 
to  impress  on  them  a  sense  of  the  great 
ness  of  the  jurist's  daughter,  with  the  re 
sult  that  Miss  Theodora's  comings  and 
goings  were  always  a  matter  of  general 
neighborhood  interest.  Sometimes  Miss 
Theodora  invited  the  children  hanging 
about  her  doorstep  to  come  inside  the 


MISS  THEODORA  41 

house,  where  she  regaled  them  with  gin 
gerbread,  or  let  them  look  through  the 
folio  of  engravings  in  the  library. 

In  spite  of  the  lady's  kindness  they  all 
stood  in  awe  of  her,  as  the  daughter  of  a 
Great  Man,  whose  orations  were  printed 
in  their  school  readers  beside  those  of 
Webster  and  Clay.  Miss  Theodora,  with 
her  quiet  manner  and  high  forehead,  in 
a  day  when  all  other  women  wore  more 
elaborate  coiffures,  seemed  to  the  chil 
dren  like  a  person  in  a  book,  and  their 
answers  to  her  questions  were  always  the 
merest  monosyllables. 

It  was  not  worldliness  altogether 
which  took  Ernest  away  from  his  former 
playmates.  After  his  mornings  with 
Ralph  and  their  tutor,  he  had  to  study 
pretty  hard  in  the  afternoon.  His  even 
ings  were  generally  devoted  to  Miss 
Theodora ;  either  he  read  aloud  while  she 
sewed,  or  they  played  chess  with  that 
curious  set  of  carved  chessmen  given  her 
father  by  a  grateful  Salem  client  years 
before. 


42  MISS  THEODORA 

In  little  ways,  Miss  Theodora,  though 
not  a  sharp  observer,  sometimes  thought 
that  she  detected  a  growing  worldliness 
in  Ernest. 

"Why  don't  we  get  some  new  car 
pets?"  he  asked  one  day.  It  was  the 
very  spring  before  he  entered  college. 
"I  never  could  tell,  Aunt  Teddy,  what 
those  flowers  were  meant  to  be.  When 
I  was  a  little  chap,  I  used  to  wonder 
whether  they  were  bunches  of  roses  or 
dahlias ;  but  now  you'd  hardly  know  they 
were  meant  to  be  flowers  at  all." 

This  was  true  enough,  for  the  carpet, 
with  its  huge  pattern,  designed  for  the 
drawing  room  of  their  old  house,  had 
been  trodden  upon  by  so  many  feet  that 
now  hardly  the  faint  outline  of  its  former 
roses  remained.  The  furniture,  too,  was 
growing  shabby ;  the  heavy  green  rep  of 
the  easy  chairs  had  faded  in  spots,  the 
gilded  picture  frames,  were  tarnished, 
and  the  window  draperies,  with  their  im 
posing  lambrequins,  were  sadly  out  of 


MISS  THEODORA  43 

fashion.  Yet  from  Miss  Theodora's 
evasive  reply  the  boy  did  not  realize  that 
poverty  prevented  her  refurnishing  the 
rooms  in  modern  fashion.  He  had 
everything  he  needed;  but  the  circle  of 
relatives  all  continued  to  say,  "It's  won 
derful  that  Theodora  manages  as  well  as 
she  does." 


"Come  along!  Hurry  up!"  called 
Ernest  to  Ben,  one  winter's  day,  kicking 
his  heels  into  the  little  hillocks  of  frozen 
snow  on  the  sidewalk ;  and  even  as  he 
spoke  Ben,  with  a  "Here  I  am,"  rushed 
from  the  house  with  his  skates  slung 
over  his  shoulder.  Ernest  carried  in  a 
green  bag,  on  which  his  aunt  had  worked 
his  initials  in  shaded  brown,  a  pair  of 
the  famous  "Climax"  club  skates,  a 
present  from  his  cousin,  Richard  Somer 
set.  Reaching  the  Common,  after  a 
brisk  run,  they  began  to  put  on  their 
skates. 


MISS  THEODORA  45 

The  cold  day  had  apparently  kept 
many  of  the  younger  boys  and  girls 
away,  and  although  there  was  room 
enough  for  all  the  skaters,  not  a  few  of 
them  were  objectionably  rough  and  bois 
terous.  Near  the  spot  where  Ernest  and 
Ben  were,  among  a  small  group  of  well- 
dressed  lads,  swinging  stick  or  playing 
hockey,  Ernest  was  sorry  to  recognize 
Ralph  Digby. 

"I  wouldn't  have  come  if  I'd  known 
Ralph  would  be  here,"  he  said  regret 
fully  to  Ben. 

"No  matter,  we  needn't  have  anything 
to  do  with  him,"  said  Ben  cheerfully. 
It  was  no  secret  to  Ben  that  Ralph  and 
Ernest,  out  of  school  hours,  had  little  to 
do  with  each  other. 

"Well,  I  hate  to  go  near  Ralph,"  re 
sponded  Ernest.  "He  always  tries  to 
make  me  feel  small,"  and  for  the  mo 
ment  Ernest  became  uncomfortably  con 
scious  that  the  sleeves  of  his  overcoat 
were  a  trifle  too  short,  and  that  it  had,  on 


46  MISS  THEODORA 

the  whole,  an  outgrown  look,  for  this 
was  the  second  winter  he  had  worn  it. 

"Don't  take  any  notice  of  him,  except 
to  speak  to  him  as  you  pass,"  said  Ben. 

"I  know  that's  all  I  need  do,  but  Ralph 
always  seems  to  me  to  be  saying  to  him 
self,  'Oh,  you're  nothing  but  a  poor  re 
lation.'  " 

"Well,  any  way,  he's  a  poorer  skater," 
laughed  Ben,  and  the  two  boys  glided  off, 
passing  Ralph  in  his  fur-trimmed  coat, 
surrounded  by  half  a  dozen  lads  of  his 
own  kind. 

It  was  this  very  superiority  of  Ernest's 
in  skating,  in  his  studies,  in  manners,  that 
bred  the  ill-feeling  in  Ralph's  heart  tow 
ards  him.  Ralph  was  indolent  in  his 
studies  and  heavy  on  his  feet.  He 
looked  on  enviously  as  Ernest  wheeled 
past  him  time  and  time  again,  and  said 
to  his  friends  that  he  didn't  care  to  skate 
any  longer.  "There  was  too  much  riff 
raff  on  the  pond."  He  was  irritated,  not 
only  by  Ernest's  skill  and  grace  in  skat- 


MISS  THEODORA  47 

ing,  but  by  the  fact  that  his  poorer  cou 
sin  wore  the  famous  "Climax"  club 
skates.  For  a  long  time  Ralph  himself 
had  been  the  only  boy  in  his  little  set 
who  possessed  skates  of  this  kind.  They 
were  a  novelty  and  expensive,  and  the 
average  boy  wore  the  old-fashioned 
strap  skates.  No  one  knew  that  he  be 
grudged  Ernest  his  glistening  skates. 
Regardless  of  the  sneering  words  wafted 
to  them  as  they  skated  past  Ralph  and  his 
friends,  Ernest  and  Ben,  with  glowing 
cheeks  and  tingling  blood,  wheeled  and 
curvetted  until  they  were  well-nigh 
breathless.  At  last,  as  the  reddening 
western  sky  marked  the  end  of  the  brief 
afternoon,  Ernest,  unfastening  his  skates, 
laid  them  on  the  stony  margin  of  the 
pond,  as  he  hastened  to  one  of  the  Gar 
den  paths  to  help  a  little  girl  who  had 
fallen  down.  _ 

"Where  are  my  skates?"  he  shouted 
to  Ben,  who  was  still  curvetting  about. 

"I  haven't  seen  them.     Where  did  you 


48  MISS  THEODORA 

leave  them?"  he  called  back,  and  in  a 
moment  was  at  Ernest's  side.  The  green 
bag  hung  limp  on  Ernest's  arm ;  he 
could  hardly  believe  that  the  skates  were 
not  there. 

"Well,  at  any  rate  we  can  ask  about 
them,"  said  Ben,  and  the  two  boys,  Er 
nest  somewhat  forlornly,  went  about 
among  the  few  skaters  still  left  on  the 
pond,  asking  if  any  one  could  help  them 
find  the  skates.  A  few  of  the  boys  an 
swered  pleasantly  that  they  knew  noth 
ing  about  them,  the  majority — and  these 
the  rougher — professed  to  be  insulted  at 
the  question,  adding,  "I'll  knock  you 
down  if  you  think  I  took  your  skates," 
and  even  Ralph  was  disagreeable  in  his 
reply. 

"Perhaps  some  of  your  friends  could 
tell  you  something  about  them;  you  al 
ways  are  chumming  with  such  queer  fel 
lows — you  never  can  expect  much  from 
canaille."  Ralph  always  had  a  French 
word  ready.  As  he  spoke  he  looked  at 
Ben  in  a  way  that  made  Ernest  cry : 


MISS  THEODORA  49 

"For  shame,  Ralph !" 

Ben's  eye  flashed.  He  lifted  his  arm, 
seized  Ralph  by  the  coat  collar,  shook 
him  with  some  violence,  and  then  turned 
on  his  heel  without  a  word. 

"That  was  right,"  said  Ernest,  approv 
ingly.  "I  often  wonder  how  you  stand 
so  much  from  Ralph.  He  tries  to  make 
himself  so  disagreeable." 

"He  doesn't  have  to  try  very  hard," 
answered  Ben ;  "he's  disagreeable 
enough  without  trying,"  for  Ralph  never 
neglected  to  show  that  he  thought  Ben 
infinitely  beneath  him.  A  curt  nod 
when  they  happened  to  meet  was  almost 
more  irritating  than  a  direct  cut.  Sor 
rowfully  enough  Ernest  went  home 
wards.  His  skating  for  the  season,  he 
knew,  was  over  unless  he  should  recover 
the  skates.  Generally,  he  did  not  look 
on  the  dark  side  of  things,  but  this  day 
he  was  disconsolate.  In  spite  of  Ben's 
assurance  that  the  lost  skates  would  be 
found,  he  was  confident  that  they  were 
gone  forever. 


50  MISS  THEODORA 

Two  days  later  Ben  came  to  him  with 
more  excitement  in  his  manner  than  was 
his  wont. 

"Would  your  aunt  let  you  go  over  to 
the  school  with  me  this  afternoon?  I 
think  we've  spotted  them." 

Ernest  rushed  for  his  cap  and  mittens. 

"Of  course  she  would !  She's  out  now, 
but  I  can  go  without  asking."  No  ex 
planation  was  needed  to  tell  him  that  the 
"them"  meant  his  missing  skates. 

"You  see,  I  had  my  suspicions  from 
the  first  moment,"  said  Ben,  "but  I 
didn't  dare  say  anything  till  I  was  sure. 
You  know,  there's  one  thing  we  never 
agree  about,  but  I  won't  say  anything 
until  you  hear  for  yourself." 

Ernest  was  soon  following  Ben  up  the 
broad  wooden  stairs  to  the  Principal's 
room.  The  master  himself  looked  up 
with  some  interest  as  the  boys  came  in. 

"Yes,  yes,  I'll  send  for  him  at  once," 
he  said,  after  he  had  briefly  welcomed 
them,  "or,  no,  I'll  take  you  to  the  room 


MISS  THEODORA  51 

where  he  is,"  and  before  he  realized 
where  he  was  going  Ernest  found  him 
self  following  Ben  and  the  Principal  into 
the  large  schoolroom,  where  fifty  pairs  oi 
curious  eyes  were  turned  toward  them. 

"Brown,  come  here,"  called  the  mas 
ter.  An  undersized  boy,  freckled,  with 
small  eyes  near  together,  shuffled  for 
ward. 

"Did  you  tell  Jim  Grey  that  you  had 
found  a  pair  of  skates  the  day  before 
yesterday? — answer — 'yes'  or  'no.'  " 

Not  a  word  came  from  the  boy,  who 
held  his  head  down  sulkily. 

"Answer — quickly — or  home  you  go 
at  once.  Did  you  or  did  you  not  find  a 
pair  of  skates?" 

"No,  I  didn't,"  at  last  came  from  the 
reluctant  lips. 

"That's  enough,  sir!"  thundered  the 
Principal.  "Now,  Bruce,  tell  your 
story." 

Then  Ben,  leaving  the  room  for  a  mo 
ment,  came  back,  accompanied  by  a  man 
who  carried  a  package  under  his  arm. 


52  MISS  THEODORA 

"Yes,  sir,  that's  the  boy,  sir,"  said  the 
man  with  the  package,  pointing  to 
Brown.  "He  came  to  my  shop  yesterday 
with  these  skates,  sir,"  and  he  held  up 
before  the  astonished  eyes  of  Ernest  his 
beloved  skates.  "He  said  as  how  they'd 
been  given  to  him,  and  as  he  didn't  have 
no  time  for  skating,  would  I  buy  them, 
which  I  did,  sir,  for  a  dollar." 

"A  dollar,"  said  Ernest  to  himself, 
pitying  the  boy  who  knew  so  little  the 
value  of  a  good  thing  as  to  let  it  go  for 
next  to  nothing. 

"What  have  you  to  say  to  this, 
Brown?" 

"Yes,  they  were  given  to  me,"  said  the 
boy,  doggedly. 

"Who  gave  them  to  you?" 

"A  chap  in  a  fur  coat,  I  dunno  his 
name.  I  was  standing  by  the  pond,  and 
says  I,  'Wot  beauties,'  when  I  see  them 
laying  there,  and  says  he,  Take  them 
quick,  they're  mine,  but  I  don't  want  to 
skate  no  more,'  and  he  poked  them  over 


MISS  THEODORA  53 

to  me  with  his  stick,  and  says  he,  'Hurry 
off,  or  I  may  change  my  mind,'  and  they 
wouldn't  fit  me,  sir,  and  so  I  sold  them." 

"A  likely  story,"  said  the  Principal. 
But  two  or  three  boys  were  found  to  cor 
roborate  this  statement  of  Brown,  one 
of  whom  was  above  suspicion  as  regard 
ed  truthfulness  —  the  other  two  were 
somewhat  doubtful. 

"Are  these  your  skates?"  asked  the 
Principal  of  Ernest,  who,  stepping  up, 
showed  his  name  engraved  on  the  sides. 

"Go  to  my  room,  Brown,"  said  the 
Principal.  "I  will  settle  with  you — and 
you,  young  gentleman,"  handing  Ernest 
his  property,  "take  better  care  of  your 
possessions  in  the  future."  Then  turn 
ing  to  Ben,  "Thank  you,  Bruce,  for  look 
ing  into  this  matter.  Brown  has  given 
me  a  great  deal  of  trouble  in  many  ways, 
and  now  I  guess  the  best  thing  is  to  sus 
pend  him."  For,  although  at  the  head 
of  a  Boston  school,  the  Principal  still 
clung  to  the  colloquial  "guess." 


54  MISS  THEODORA 

Ben  and  Ernest  withdrew  from  the 
room  under  the  fire  of  as  many  approv 
ing  as  disapproving  eyes.  There  were, 
of  course,  not  a  few  boys  who  sympa 
thized  with  Brown,  some  from  a  class 
feeling,  and  others  because  they  felt 
themselves  to  be  kindred  spirits  of  the 
culprit. 

"How  did  you  manage  to  find  out 
about  it  at  all,  Ben?  You're  awfully 
clever,"  said  Ernest,  and  then  the  elder 
boy  explained  that  he  had  remembered 
seeing  Brown  just  before  Ernest  left  the 
ice  talking  earnestly  with  Ralph,  and 
that  when  he  came  across  the  skates  in  a 
shop  he  made  inquiries,  which  resulted 
in  his  suspecting  collusion  between  the 
two.  Though  Ernest  did  not  speak  to 
him  about  it,  Ralph  felt  that  his  cousin 
despised  his  meanness,  and  Ernest  knew 
that  Ralph  disliked  him  all  the  more  for 
his  knowledge. 

While  his  regard  for  Ralph  constantly 
diminished,  Ernest's  fondness  for  Kate 
as  constantly  increased. 


MISS  THEODORA  55 

"She  doesn't  seem  a  bit  like  Ralph's 
sister,"  he  would  say  confidentially  to 
Ben ;  and  Ben  would  echo  a  hearty  "In 
deed  she  doesn't." 

Kate  was  never  happier  than  when  she 
had  permission  to  spend  the  day  with 
Miss  Theodora.  Paying  little  attention 
to  the  charges  of  Marie,  her  French 
maid,  to  "Walk  quietly  like  a  little  lady," 
she  would  hop  and  skip  along  the  Gar 
den  mall  and  up  the  hill  to  Miss  Theo 
dora's  house.  What  joy,  when  Marie 
had  been  dismissed  and  sent  home,  to  sit 
beside  Miss  Theodora  and  learn  some 
fancy  stitch  in  crochet,  or  perhaps  go  to 
the  kitchen  to  help  Diantha  make 
cookies. 

"Our  cook  won't  even  let  me  go  down 
the  back  stairs,  and  I've  only  been  in  our 
kitchen  once  in  my  life;  and  I  just  love 
Diantha  for  giving  me  that  dear  little 
rolling-pin,  and  showing  me  how  to 
make  cookies." 

Kate  was  almost  as  fond  of  Miss  Chat- 


56  MISS  THEODORA 

terwits  as  of  Diantha.  One  of  her  chief 
childish  delights  was  the  privilege  some 
times  accorded  her  of  spending  an  after 
noon  in  the  little  suite  of  rooms  occupied 
by  the  seamstress  and  her  sisters.  Be 
sides  the  old  claw-foot  bureau  and  high- 
back  chairs  in  her  bedroom,  the  heavy 
fur  tippet  and  faded  cashmere  shawl — 
either  of  which  she  donned  (according  to 
the  season)  on  especially  great  occasions 
— Miss  Chatterwits  had  a  few  treasures, 
relics  of  a  more  opulent  past.  These  she 
always  showed  to  Kate  and  Ernest  when 
they  visited  her,  as  a  reward  for  previous 
good  behavior. 

Ernest  was  usually  less  interested  in 
these  treasures  than  Kate.  He  liked 
better  to  talk  to  the  green  parrot  that 
blinked  and  swung  in  its  narrow  cage  in 
the  room  where  lay  the  little  seamstress's 
bedridden  sister.  But  for  Kate,  the  top 
drawer  of  Miss  Chatterwits'  bureau  con 
tained  infinite  wealth.  The  curious 
Scotch  pebble  pin,  the  silver  bracelets, 


MISS  THEODORA  57 

the  long,  thin  gold  chain,  the  old  hair 
brooches,  and,  best  of  all,  that  curious 
spherical  watch,  without  hands,  without 
works,  seemed  to  Kate  more  beautiful 
and  valuable  than  all  the  jewelry  in  the 
velvet-lined  receptacles  of  her  mother's 
jewel  casket.  More  attractive  still  was 
a  shelf  in  the  closet  off  Miss  Chatterwits' 
bedroom.  On  this  shelf  was  a  row  of 
pasteboard  boxes,  uniform  in  size, 
wherein  were  stored  scraps  of  velvet,  silk 
and  ribbon,  gingham,  cloth  and  muslins 
— fragments,  indeed,  of  all  the  dresses 
worn  by  Miss  Chatterwits  since  her  six 
teenth  year.  As  materials  had  not  been 
bought  by  Miss  Chatterwits  since  her 
father's  death  had  left  her  penniless,  a 
good  thirty  years  before  Kate  knew  her, 
the  pieces  in  the  boxes  were  genuine 
curiosities. 

"Why  didn't  you  ever  get  married, 
Miss  Chatterwits?"  asked  Ernest  one 
day  when  he  and  Kate  were  paying  her 
a  visit 


58  MISS  THEODORA 

"Oh,  I  don't  know ;"  and  the  old  lady 
simpered  with  the  same  self-conscious 
ness  that  prompts  the  girl  of  eighteen  to 
blush  when  pointed  questions  are  put  to 
her ;  and  when  Ernest,  who  always  want 
ed  a  definite  answer  to  every  question, 
persisted,  she  added  with  a  sigh,  "Well,  I 
suppose  I  was  hard  to  suit."  Then,  as  if 
in  amplification  of  this  reply,  she  began 
to  sing  to  herself  the  words  of  an  old- 
fashioned  song,  which  the  children  had 
heard  her  sing  before : — 

When  I  was  a  girl  of  eighteen  years  old, 
I  was  as  handsome  as  handsome  could  be; 
I  was  taught  to  expect  wit,  wisdom  and  gold, 
And  nothing  else  would  do  for  me — for  me. 
And  nothing  else  would  do  for  me. 

The  first  was  a  youth  any  girl  might  adore, 

And  as  ardent  as  lovers  should  be; 

But  mamma  having  heard  the  young  man  was 

quite  poor, 

Why,  he  wouldn't  do  for  me — for  me, 
Why,  he  wouldn't  do  for  me. 


MISS  THEODORA  59 

None  of  the  many  verses  describing 
the  various  lovers  of  the  scornful  young 
lady  made  so  deep  an  impression  on  the 
children  as  the  opening  lines,  in  which 
she  was  said  to  be  "as  handsome  as  hand 
some  could  be ;"  and  Ernest,  who  was  a 
literal  little  fellow,  said  to  Kate,  when 
they  were  out  of  Miss  Chatterwits'  hear 
ing: 

"Now,  do  you  think  that  homely  peo 
ple  were  ever  handsome  once  upon  a 
time?" 

Now,  Kate  could  never  be  made  to  call 
Miss  Chatterwits  homely.  Indeed,  one 
day,  in  a  burst  of  gratitude,  when  the 
latter  had  lent  the  child  her  watch  t3 
wear  for  an  hour  or  two,  the  little  girl 
exclaimed : 

"Oh,  Miss  Chatterwits,  you  are  very 
handsome !" 

"Nobody  ever  told  me  that  before, 
Kate,"  said  the  old  woman. 

Then,  with  the  frankness  that  in  later 
years  often  caused  her  to  nullify  the  good 


60  MISS  THEODORA 

impression  made  by  some  pretty  speech, 
the  child  added : 

"I  mean  very  handsome  all  but  your 
face." 

What  could  be  a  clearer  case  of  "hand 
some  is  what  handsome  does." 


VII. 

Mrs.  Stuart  Digby  scarcely  approved 
Kate's  fondness  for  Miss  Theodora  and 
her  friends.  Stuart  Digby  had  married 
two  or  three  years  before  John,  and  was 
living  in  Paris  when  the  Civil  War  broke 


62  MISS  THEODORA 

out.  His  own  impulse  was  to  return  at 
once  and  fight ;  but  as  his  wife  would  not 
consent  to  this,  they  remained  abroad 
until  Ralph  was  ten  years  old  and  Kate 
four  years  younger.  Both  children  at 
this  time  spoke  French  better  than  Eng 
lish,  and  Ralph  for  a  long  time  disliked 
everything  American — like  his  mother, 
who,  not  Boston  born,  professed  little  in 
terest  in  things  Bostonian.  But  in  Kate 
Stuart  Digby  saw  the  enthusiasm  which 
had  marked  his  own  youth,  and  he  en 
couraged  her  in  having  ideals,  only  wish 
ing  that  he  had  been  true  to  his  own. 

"Perhaps  if  I  hadn't  married  so  early," 
he  would  think — then,  with  a  sigh,  would 
wonder  if,  left  to  himself,  he  might  pos 
sibly  have  amounted  to  something.  For 
Stuart  Digby  was  not  nearly  as  self-satis 
fied  as  the  chance  observer  supposed. 

When  he  and  John  were  at  school  he 
had  intended  to  study  medicine,  for  his 
scientific  tastes  were  as  decided  as  John's 
bent  for  the  law.  But  he  had  yielded  all 


MISS  THEODORA  63 

too  weakly  to  his  love  for  the  prettiest 
girl  in  his  set,  and  an  heiress,  too.  By 
the  death  of  his  father  and  mother  he  had 
already  come  into  possession  of  his  own 
large  fortune.  When  these  two  inde 
pendent  and  rich  young  people  were 
married,  therefore,  a  month  after  he  was 
graduated  from  Harvard,  it  was  hardly 
strange  that  Stuart  put  aside  his  medical 
course  until  he  should  have  made  the 
tour  of  Europe.  Then,  when  once  domi 
ciled  in  their  own  hotel  in  Paris,  what 
wonder  that  they  let  all  thoughts  of  Bos 
ton  disappear  in  the  background?  Just 
before  the  war  what  could  the  United 
States  offer  pleasure-seekers  comparable 
with  the  delights  of  Paris  under  the 
Second  Empire?  They  stayed  in  Eu 
rope  until  the  beginning  of  the  Franco- 
Prussian  war,  and  managed  to  leave 
Paris  just  before  the  siege. 

Xot  only  the  upsetting  of  things  in 
France,  but  a  crisis  in  Stuart  Digby's 
business  affairs,  hastened  him  home  at 


64  MISS  THEODORA 

last.  Besides,  he  felt  a  little  remorse 
about  his  children.  He  did  not  wish 
them  to  grow  up  thorough  Parisians; 
already,  young  as  they  were,  they  began 
to  show  symptoms  of  regarding  France 
as  their  country  rather  than  America. 
Disregarding,  therefore,  his  wife's  re 
monstrances,  he  broke  up  their  Paris  es 
tablishment,  despatched  his  foreign  fur 
niture  and  bric-a-brac  to  Boston,  and, 
following  soon  afterward  with  his  family, 
bought  a  house  in  the  new  part  of  Bea 
con  Street,  a  region  which,  when  he  went 
to  Europe,  had  been  submerged  in  water. 
Though  some  people  fancied  that 
Stuart  Digby  could  afford  whatever  he 
wished,  he  himself  thought  otherwise. 
After  his  return  to  Boston  he  found  that 
there  had  been  a  shrinkage  both  in  his 
own  and  his  wife's  income.  There  was 
little  danger  that  they  or  their  children 
should  ever  want,  and  yet  the  fact  that 
they  had  a  few  thousands  a  year  less  than 
they  had  expected  bred  in  them  an  un- 


MISS  THEODORA  65 

wonted  spirit  of  economy.  This  spirit  of 
economy  showed  itself  chiefly  in  their 
dealings  with  other  people.  Stuart,  for 
example,  had  always  intended  to  settle 
a  sum  of  money  on  Miss  Theodora  and 
Ernest,  but  now  he  decided  to  wait.  He 
would  help  the  boy  somewhat  in  his  ed 
ucation,  and  he  would  remember  him  in 
his  will. 

Faultless  though  he  was  in  his  address, 
elegant  though  he  was  in  his  personal 
appearance,  Stuart  Digby  was  by  no 
means  satisfied  with  the  reflection  that 
his  mirror  showed  him.  He  had  never 
expected  at  forty-five  to  find  himself  so 
portly,  so  rubicund.  Idleness,  easy  liv 
ing,  and  a  steady,  if  moderate,  indul 
gence  in  ruddy  drinks  will  increase  the 
girth  and  deepen  the  complexion  of  any 
man,  no  matter  toward  how  lofty  a  goal 
the  thoughts  of  his  youth  may  have  tend 
ed.  In  youth  he  had  professed  scorn  for 
his  own  prospective  wealth.  He,  as  well 
as  John,  should  carve  out  a  career  for 


66  MISS  THEODORA 

himself.  His  money  he  would  use  in 
certain  philanthropic  schemes.  But  fall 
ing  in  love  had  been  fatal  to  this  single- 
mindedness, — and  now,  at  forty-five, 
what  wonder  that  he  was  dissatisfied. 

To  saunter  down  Beacon  Street  to  the 
club,  to  play  a  game  of  whist  with  a  trio 
as  idle  as  himself,  to  drive,  never  in  those 
days  to  ride,  to  sit  near  uncongenial  peo 
ple  at  a  tedious,  if  fashionable,  dinner,  to 
dance  attendance  on  his  wife  or  some 
other  woman  in  the  brilliant  crushes  im 
posed  on  all  who  would  be  thought  on  in 
timate  terms  with  society — this,  he  knew, 
was  not  the  life  he  had  once  planned.  To 
be  sure,  his  footsteps  sometimes  carried 
him  beyond  the  club  to  a  little  down 
town  office  where  he  was  supposed  to 
have  business — business  so  slight  that  it 
only  irritated  him  to  pretend  to  follow  it. 
To  sign  papers,  to  approve  plans  which 
his  lawyer  and  his  agent  had  already 
carefully  thought  out,  this,  he  reasoned, 
was  almost  beneath  his  notice ;  and  so 


MISS  THEODORA  67 

after  a  time  he  gave  up  even  going  to  the 
office,  and  papers  were  sent  to  his  house 
instead  for  his  signature. 

He  might,  of  course,  have  rid  himself, 
at  least  partially,  of  his  ennui,  by  engag 
ing  in  some  definite  philanthropic 
schemes ;  but  philanthropy  as  a  profes 
sion  by  itself  wasn't  the  vogue  among 
rich  men  in  Boston  two  decades  ago. 
Even  had  it  been  the  fashion,  Stuart 
Digby  could  with  difficulty  have  adjust 
ed  himself  to  the  condition  which  this 
work  imposed.  His  long  residence 
abroad  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  re 
gard  impartially  his  American  fellow- 
citizens,  whether  looked  at  as  an  object 
of  political  or  philanthropic  interest. 

Yet  if  Stuart  Digby  fell  far  short  of  his 
own  ideal,  there  was  at  least  one  person 
in  the  world  who  believed  him  to  be  per 
fect  ;  not  his  wife,  not  his  son,  but  his 
daughter  Kate,  who  was  never  so  happy 
as  when,  clinging  to  his  hand,  she  could 
coax  him  to  take  a  long  walk  with  her 


68  MISS  THEODORA 

over  the  Mill-dam  toward  the  Brookline 
boundary. 

Moreover,  it  may  be  said  without  sar 
casm  that  his  many  years'  residence  in 
Europe  had  made  Stuart  Digby  of  much 
more  value  to  his  friends  in  general  than 
he  himself  perhaps  realized.  He  had 
what  might  be  called  a  refined  and  thor 
ough  geographical  taste ;  this  is  to  say, 
he  was  a  connoisseur  of  places.  He 
could  tell  intending  travellers  just  what 
climate,  what  cuisine,  even  what  com 
pany  they  would  be  likely  to  find  at  Nice, 
at  Gastein,  at  Torquay,  at  certain  sea 
sons.  He  had  many  a  picturesque  and 
hitherto  unheard  of  nook  to  recommend, 
and  when  the  great  capitals,  especially 
Paris,  were  under  discussion,  he  could 
pronounce  discriminatingly  upon  the 
hotels  and  shops  most  worthy  the  pat 
ronage  of  a  man  of  culture. 


VIII. 

"Yes,  it  was  a  pleasant  funeral,"  said 
Miss  Chatterwits,  as  she  sat  sewing  one 
morning  at  Miss  Theodora's.  Kate,  who 
was  present,  laughed  at  the  speech,  al 
though  she  understood  Miss  Chatterwits' 
idiosyncracies  in  the  matter  of  funerals. 
To  the  latter,  funerals  were  sources  of 
real  delight,  and  few  at  the  West  End 
were  ungraced  by  her  presence.  In  her 
best  gown  of  shining  black  silk,  with  its 
rows  and  rows  of  bias  ruffles,  she  seemed 
as  necessary  to  the  proper  conduct  of  the 
ceremony  as  the  undertaker  himself. 
With  her  wide  acquaintance  among  the 


70  MISS  THEODORA 

people  of  the  neighborhood,  she  could 
decide  exactly  the  proper  place  for  each 
mourner;  she  knew  just  who  belonged 
in  the  back  and  who  in  the  front  parlor, 
and  the  grave  demeanor  with  which  she 
assigned  each  one  his  seat  hardly  hid  her 
air  of  bustling  satisfaction. 

Miss  Theodora  and  Kate  were  there 
fore  not  shocked  when  she  repeated, 
"Yes,  it  was  a  pleasant  funeral,"  continu 
ing:  "I  declare,  I  don't  think  there  was 
a  soul  there  I  didn't  know.  I  was  able  to 
be  real  useful  showing  them  where  to  sit. 
You  should  have  seen  the  flowers.  It 
took  us  the  best  part  of  a  day  to  fix  them. 
The  family,  of  course,  felt  too  bad  to  take 
much  notice  of  the  flowers,  but  I  guess 
they  enjoyed  the  choir  singing.  Mary 
Timpkins  herself  would  have  been 
pleased  to  see  how  well  everything  went 
off,  for  she  always  was  so  fussy  about 
things." 

Then,  as  no  one  interrupted  her,  she 
continued :  "It's  just  a  shame,  Miss 


MISS  THEODORA  71 

Theodora,  that  you  did  not  go  yourself. 
Mr.  Blunt  made  the  most  edifying  re 
marks  you  ever  heard.  Why,  I  almost 
cried,  though  you  know  I've  had  a  great 
deal  of  experience  in  such  occasions  ;  and 
if  you'd  heard  him  I'm  sure  you'd  have 
been  miserable  for  the  rest  of  the  day." 

Kate  smiled  at  the  thought  of  the 
pleasure  her  cousin  had  missed  in  escap 
ing  this  misery,  but  Miss  Theodora,  not 
noticing  Miss  Chatterwits'  humor,  re 
sponded  merely : 

"Ah !  the  death  of  so  young  a  person 
is  always  sad." 

"Especially  under  such  painful  cir 
cumstances,"  added  Miss  Chatterwits. 

"What  circumstances?"  asked  Kate, 
now  interested. 

"Love !"  answerd  Miss  Chatterwits, 
solemnly.  "She  died  of  love." 

"Love!"  echoed  Kate.  "Shakespeare 
says  nobody  ever  died  of  love."  Then, 
with  an  afterthought :  "Perhaps  he  was 
thinking  only  of  men.  But  why  do  you 


72  MISS  THEODORA 

think  Miss  Timpkins  died  of  love?  She 
didn't  look  as  foolish  as  that." 

"Well,"— and  Miss  Chatterwits  shook 
her  head  in  joyful  significance,  for  it  al 
ways  pleased  her  to  have  news  of  this 
kind  to  tell, — "I  guess  if  Hiram  Brad- 
street  hadn't  gone  and  left  her  she'd  be 
alive  to-day." 

"What  nonsense !"  said  Kate. 

"Oh,  you  can  smile,  but  I've  sewed  at 
her  house  by  the  week  running,  and  he'd 
come  sometimes  two  afternoons  together 
to  ask  her  to  go  to  walk  somewhere ;  and 
even  if  she  was  in  the  middle  of  trying  on 
she'd  drop  everything  and  run,  looking 
as  pleased  as  could  be." 

"Any  one  would  look  pleased  to 
escape  a  trying  on." 

"Oh,  you  can  make  light  of  it.  But 
once  when  I  said  I  guessed  I'd  be  fitting 
a  wedding  dress  soon,  she  colored  right 
up,  and  said  she,  'Oh,  we're  only 
friends/  " 

"That's  nothing." 


MISS  THEODORA  73 

"Perhaps  it  was  nothing  when  Mary 
Timpkins  began  to  fade  the  very  minute 
she  heard  Hiram  Bradstreet  was  en 
gaged  to  a  girl  he  met  on  the  steamer  last 
summer.  Why  did  he  go  to  Europe 
anyway?" 

"Probably  because  Mary  Timpkins 
wouldn't  marry  him;  for  truly,  Miss 
Chatterwits,  I'm  going  to  agree  with  Dr. 
Jones  that  she  died  of  typhoid  fever." 

"Maybe, — after  she'd  run  herself  down 
worrying  about  Hiram  Bradstreet." 

"Oh,  no.  Hiram  Bradstreet,  worry 
ing  about  her,  fled  to  Europe  in  despair, 
and  let  his  heart  be  caught  in  the  re 
bound  by  that  girl  on  the  steamer." 

This  sensible  conclusion,  though  at  the 
time  uttered  half  in  fun,  was  characteris 
tic  of  Kate.  She  was  loath  to  believe 
that  a  well  balanced  girl  could  die  of  love. 
Love  in  the  abstract  troubled  her  as  little 
as  love  in  the  concrete.  She  seldom  in 
dulged  in  sentimental  thoughts,  much 
less  in  sentimental  conversation. 


74  MISS  THEODORA 

In  their  distaste  for  sentimentality,  Er 
nest  and  Kate  met  on  common  ground ; 
and  even  Mrs.  Digby,  though  at  one 
time  disposed  to  discountenance  their  in 
timacy,  at  length  decided  there  was  no 
danger  of  her  somewhat  self-willed 
daughter's  falling  in  love  with  her  penni 
less  cousin.  In  time,  however,  as  Ernest 
boy-like,  found  his  pleasure  more  and 
more  in  things  outside  the  house,  Miss 
Theodora  and  Kate  drew  nearer  to 
gether. 

The  elder  woman  had  always  had  a 
certain  pleasure  in  acting  as  friend  and 
helper  to  a  little  circle  of  poor  people,  of 
whom  there  were  so  many  on  the  narrow 
streets  descending  toward  the  north. 
These  were  not  the  poor  whites  to  whom 
Miss  Theodora's  mother  had  been  a 
Lady  Bountiful,  but  "darkies,"  as  Dian- 
tha  called  them,  of  mysterious  origin  and 
of  still  more  mysterious  habits.  They 
were  crowded  together  in  queer-smelling 
houses,  in  narrow  lanes  and  alleys,  or  in 


MISS  THEODORA  75 

the  upper  stories  over  shops  in  the 
squalid  main  thoroughfares  of  the  dis 
trict  which  some  people  still  call  "Nigger 
Hill." 

''It  doesn't  seem  a  bit  like  Boston," 
Kate  would  say,  clinging  to  Miss  Theo 
dora's  arm  while  they  went  in  and  out 
of  the  rickety  dwellings,  where  stout 
black  women,  with  heads  swathed  in 
bandannas,  or  shoeless  children  in 
ragged  clothes  saluted  them  respectfully. 
Although  Miss  Theodora  knew  nothing 
of  modern  scientific  charities,  she  tried 
to  make  reform  and  reward  go  hand  in 
hand. 

"I  feel,"  she  said  occasionally,  "as  if  I 
oughtn't  to  help  Beverly  Brown's  family 
when  I  know  the  man  is  drinking;  but  I 
can't  bear  to  see  those  children  without 
shoes,  or  let  Araminta  suffer  for  food 
with  that  baby  to  care  for." 

"Of  course  you  can't,"  Kate  would 
answer,  emphatically :  "and  Moses  and 
Aaron  Brown  are  the  very  cunningest 


76  MISS  THEODORA 

twins  any  one  could  imagine,  even  if 
they  are  bow-legged."  And  then  Kate, 
opening  her  little  silk  bag,  would  display 
within  a  collection  of  oranges,  sticks  of 
candy,  and  even  painted  wooden  toys 
which  she  had  bought  on  her  way 
through  Charles  Street.  "Come,  Cousin 
Theodora,"  she  would  cry,  "put  on  your 
hat  and  coat,  and  let  us  go  down  and  see 
the  twins,  and  let  me  carry  this  basket." 

Or  again :  "There  isn't  any  harm  in 
my  just  getting  some  of  this  bright  calico 
for  aprons  for  Araminta,  and  you  don't 
care  if  I  buy  mittens  for  the  twins,"  she 
would  say  entreatingly ;  for  Miss  Theo 
dora,  always  careful  of  money  herself, 
often  had  to  restrain  her  young  cousin's 
expenditures,  at  least  in  the  matter  of 
clothes.  As  regarded  food,  it  was  dif 
ferent. 

When  Kate,  stopping  in  front  of  one 
of  the  little  provision  shops,  with  their 
fly-specked  windows,  through  which 
was  dimly  seen  an  array  of  wilted  vege- 


MISS  THEODORA  77 

tables  and  doubtful-looking^  meats,  de 
cided  to  order  a  dinner  for  this  one  or 
that  of  her  proteges,  Miss  Theodora  had 
not  the  heart  to  hinder.  But  I  will  do 
her  the  credit  to  say  that  she  never  en 
couraged  the  giving  of  dinners  to  those 
whose  need  was  caused  by  vice.  In  the 
future  of  the  dark-skinned  boys  and  girls 
Miss  Theodora  took  -a  great  interest. 
She  realized  that  in  the  public  schools 
they  had  their  opportunity ;  and  she  saw 
with  regret  that  not  all  who  were  edu 
cated  made  the  best  use  of  their  educa 
tion.  Restless,  unwilling  to  take  the 
kind  of  work  which  alone  was  likely  to 
fall  to  their  lot,  some  of  the  young  girls, 
educated  or  uneducated,  drifted  into- 
ways  which  the  older  women  of  their 
race  spoke  of  with  the  strongest  disap 
probation,  vj 
"They's  a  wuthless  lot,  the  hull  of 
them,  and  I  wouldn't  try  to  do  nothing 
for  them  if  I  was  you,"  Diantha  often 
exclaimed,  when  Miss  Theodora  ad- 


78  MISS  THEODORA 

mitted  how  sorely  the  problem  of  these 
dusky  people  pressed  upon  her.  Yet 
Diantha  herself  was  almost  certain  to 
call  her  mistress'  attention  to  the  next 
case  of  need  on  which  she  herself  stum 
bled  in  her  wanderings  among  her  peo 
ple.  Or,  as  likely  as  not,  when  Miss 
Theodora  was  sought  out  by  some  poor 
creature  in  real  or  pretended  misery,  the 
present  emergency  would  overthrow  all 
theories. 

In  one  of  the  hill  streets  there  was  a 
home  for  colored  old  women,  holding 
not  a  large  number  of  inmates,  but  still 
holding,  as  Kate  expressed  it,  "a  very 
contented  crowd"  —  much  more  con 
tented,  indeed,  than  many  of  the  dwellers 
in  the  "Old  Ladies'  Home,"  the  refuge 
for  white  women  who  had  seen  better 
days. 

"I  went  to  see  old  Mrs.  Smith,"  said 
Kate  one  day,  speaking  of  an  inmate  of 
the  latter  institution.  "She  was  sitting 
with  her  blind  drawn,  looking  as  glum 


MISS  THEODORA  79 

as  could  be.  'Why  don't  you  raise  the 
curtain?'  I  asked.  'You  have  such  a 
beautiful  view  of  the  river.'  'Oh,  yes,' 
she  said,  'beautiful  for  anybody  who 
likes  rivers.'  Do  you  know  she'd  rather 
sit  moping  in  a  corner  all  day  than  try 
to  get  some  pleasure  out  of  the  lovely 
view  across  the  river  from  her  window ! 
She  enjoys  being  miserable  now,  just 
because  she  has  seen  'better  days.' ': 

"There  are  a  great  many  people  like 
her  in  the  world,"  smiled  Miss  Theodora. 

"Well,  I  prefer  old  Auntie  Jane  up  in 
the  colored  women's  home.  She  says 
that  she  never  was  as  well  off  as  she  has 
been  since  she  came  to  the  home.  She 
has  a  little  window  box  with  a  small 
geranium  and  some  white  elysium  in 
blossom ;  and  she  says  that  it  reminds 
her  of  the  old  plantation  where  she  grew 
up.  She  can  see  nothing  from  her  win 
dow  but  houses  across  the  narrow  street ; 
but  she  is  a  great  deal  happier  than  Mrs. 
Smith  with  all  her  view." 


IX. 

When  Kate  accompanied  her  on  her 
round  of  visits,  Miss  Theodora  did  not 
penetrate  far  into  the  little  lanes  that  zig 
zagged  off  from  Phillips  Street.  She 
kept  more  to  the  main  road,  and  seldom 
took  the  young  girl  upstairs,  or  down 
into  the  dingy  basements.  For  in  her 
mind's  eye  a  large  place  was  occupied  by 
Mrs.  Stuart  Digby,  who  at  any  time 
might  end  Kate's  visiting  among  the 
poor.  Kate,  therefore,  had  to  content 
hersef  with  restricted  vistas  of  fascinating 


MISS  THEODORA  81 

alleys  with  wooden  houses  sloping  toward 
each  other  at  a  curious  angle,  with  little 
balconies  of  strangely  southern  appear 
ance  ;  and  she  sighed  that  she  could  not 
wander  within  them.  She  looked  long 
ingly,  too,  at  the  little  church  whenever 
they  passed  it ;  for  Ben,  who,  rather  for 
entertainment  than  edification,  went 
there  occasionally  to  the  evening  prayer 
meetings,  had  repeated  many  amusing 
speeches  made  by  the  colored  brothers. 
Still,  if  she  could  not  do  all  that  she 
wished  to,  she  made  the  most  of  what 
came  in  her  way.  She  loved  to  notice 
the  difference  between  the  kinds  of 
things  sold  in  Phillips  Street  shops  and 
in  those  of  the  more  pretentious  thor 
oughfare  to  the  north,  through  which  the 
horse-cars  ran  to  Cambridge.  In  the 
former  case,  eatables  of  all  kinds  were 
conspicuous, — not  only  meat  and  vege 
tables,  and  especially  sausages,  but  corn 
for  popping  and  molasses  candy  and 
spruce  gum,  all  heterogeneously  dis- 


82  MISS  THEODORA 

played  in  the  small  window  of  one  little 
shop.  On  Cambridge  Street,  oyster  sa 
loons  and  bar-rooms  and  pawn-shops, 
before  which  hung  a  great  variety  of  old 
garments  on  hooks,  jostled  against  each 
other,  strangely  contrasting  with  numer 
ous  cake-shops,  which  offered  to  the 
passer-by  a  great  variety  of  unwhole 
some  comestibles.  From  the  little  win 
dows  of  the  dwelling  rooms  above  the 
shops,  frowsy  and  unkempt  women 
looked  down  on  the  street  below,  and 
Miss  Theodora  usually  drew  Kate  quick 
ly  along,  as  occasionally  they  traversed 
it  for  a  short  distance  on  their  way  to  the 
hospital. 

In  the  same  neighborhood  was  a  short 
street  of  unsavory  reputation,  partly  on 
account  of  a  murder  committed  within 
its  limits  many  years  before,  and  partly 
because  it  held  the  city  morgue.  Hardly 
realizing  where  she  was,  Miss  Theodora 
one  day  was  picking  her  way  along  the 
slippery  sidewalk,  with  Kate  closely  fol- 


MISS  THEODORA  83 

lowing,  when  something  dark  crossed 
their  path.  They  stopped  to  make  way 
for  it.  It  was  a  grim,  indefinite  some 
thing,  which  two  men  had  lifted  from  a 
wagon  to  carry  into  a  neighboring  build 
ing — a  something  whose  resemblance  to 
a  human  body  was  not  concealed  by  the 
dark  green  cloth  covering  it.  Then  they 
knew  that  they  were  near  the  morgue; 
and  while  the  elder  woman  was  regret 
ting  that  she  had  brought  Kate  with  her, 
she  heard  a  voice  speak  her  name,  and, 
turning,  saw  Ben  Bruce  but  a  few  steps 
behind. 

"Isn't  it  late  for  you  ladies  to  be  in 
this  part  of  the  city?"  he  exclaimed  as 
he  overtook  them,  and  they  realized  that 
it  was  almost  dusk. 

"We  are  not  timid,"  smiled  Miss  The 
odora;  "but  we  shall  be  glad  of  your 
company,  Ben.  We  stayed  longer  than 
we  meant  to  stay  at  the  hospital,  and  I 
know  that  I  ought  not  to  have  kept  Kate 
so  late." 


84  MISS  THEODORA 

"I  wasn't  thinking  so  much  of  the 
time  as  the  place,"  said  Ben.  "Some 
way  I  do  not  like  to  have  you  and  Miss 
Kate  wandering  about  in  these  dirty 
streets — at  least  alone." 

"I  suppose  you  think  that  we  would  be 
better  off  with  any  slip  of  a  boy.  But 
truly  we  do  not  need  a  protector,  al 
though  we  shall  be  very  glad  of  your 
company  home." 

"I  do  not  mean  safety  exactly,"  an 
swered  Ben ;  "but  it  does  not  seem  to  me 
— well,  appropriate  for  you  and  Miss 
Kate  to  go  around  into  all  kinds  of  dirty 
houses,"  and  he  glanced  at  Kate's  pretty 
gown  and  fur-trimmed  coat. 

"Oh,  it  does  not  hurt  my  clothes  at 
all,"  Kate  answered,  as  he  glanced  at  her 
dress.  "I  have  only  my  oldest  clothes 
on  to-day,  and  I've  been  in  a  very  clean 
place,  too.  I'm  sure  nothing  could  be 
cleaner  than  the  hospital." 

"Well,  you  can  turn  it  into  fun,  but 
you  know  what  I  mean,"  said  Ben.  For 


MISS  THEODORA  85 

like  many  another  young  man,  he  felt 
that  tenderly  bred  women  should  be  kept 
ignorant  of  the  unsightly  parts  of  a  city. 
Thus  as  they  went  up  the  hill  Ben  and 
Kate  kept  up  their  merry  banter,  until 
they  reached  Miss  Theodora's  door. 

"Come  in  to  tea  with  us.  Ernest  will 
be  glad  to  see  you,"  said  the  elder  wom 
an.  But  Ben  shook  his  head. 

"Thank  you  very  much,  but  they  ex 
pect  me  home." 

Nevertheless,  he  went  inside  for  a  lit 
tle  while,  and  sat  before  the  open  fire  in 
the  little  sitting-room, — Miss  Theodora 
allowed  herself  this  one  extravagance, — 
and  heard  Kate  humorously  relate  the 
adventures  of  the  afternoon. 

"I  have  brought,"  she  said,  "a  bottle 
of  old  Mrs.  Slawson's  bitters.  I  feel 
guilty  in  not  having  any  of  the  many  dis 
eases  they  are  warranted  to  cure,  but  I 
shall  give  the  bottle  to  our  cook,  who  is 
always  complaining,  and  keeps  a  dozen 
bottles  sitting  on  the  kitchen  mantel- 


86  MISS  THEODORA 

piece..  You  know  about  Mrs.  Slawson, 
don't  you,  Ben?" 

"Oh,  she's  the  old  person  who  made 
so  much  money  out  of  a  patent  medi 
cine."  _ 

"Yes,  and  then  married  a  'light- 
skinned  darky/  as  she  called  him,  who 
ran  away  with  it  all.  It  is  great  fun  to 
hear  her  tell  of  the  large  number  of  peo 
ple  she  has  cured.  Why,  the  greatest 
ladies  in  Boston,  she  says,  used  to  drive 
up  in  their  carriages  to  patronize  her." 

"Why  doesn't  she  keep  up  her  busi 
ness  now?" 

"Well,  she  is  too  old  to  continue  it 
herself,  and  she  does  not  wish  any  one 
else  to  have  her  formulas.  She  has  just 
enough  money  to  live  on,  and  once  in  a 
while  she  has  a  few  bottles  put  up  to  give 
away  to  her  friends.  My  visits  to  her 
are  purely  social,  not  charitable,  and  this 
is  my  reward" — and  Kate  displayed  a 
clumsy  package  in  yellow  wrappings. 

Then  Ernest  came  in — now  a  tall  lad 


MISS  THEODORA  87 

looking  younger  than  Kate,  though  a 
year  older — and  welcomed  Ben,  and 
begged  him  to  spend  the  evening.  But 
Ben,  resolute,  though  reluctant  to  leave 
the  pleasant  group  clustered  around  Miss 
Theodora's  fire,  hurried  off  just  as  the 
clock  struck  six. 


X. 

His  father  opened  the  door  for  him 
when  he  reached  home, — his  father  in 
his  shirt  sleeves,  encircled  with  an  odor 
of  tobacco.  With  an  eye  keener  than 
usual,  the  boy  noted  particularly,  as  if 
seen  for  the  first  time,  things  to  which 
he  had  been  accustomed  all  his  life — the 
well-worn  oil-cloth  on  the  hall,  the  kero 
sene  lamp  flaring  dismally  in  its  bracket. 
How  different  it  all  was  from  the  refine 
ment  of  Miss  Theodora's  home, — for  al- 


MISS  THEODORA  89 

though  Miss  Theodora's  carpets  were 
worn  and  even  threadbare,  and,  except  in 
the  hall,  she  was  as  sparing  of  gas  as  Mr. 
Bruce  himself,  the  odor  of  cooking  never 
escaped  from  Diantha's  domain.  The 
indefinable  between  comfort  and  discom 
fort  made  the  Bruce's  economy  very  un 
like  that  practised  by  Miss  Theodora. 

"You  are  late,"  said  Mrs.  Bruce  queru 
lously  as  Ben  entered  the  dining-room. 

"Am  I?  I  met  Miss  Theodora  and 
walked  home  with  them." 

"Yes,  and  went  into  the  house  with 
them,  I  dare  say!"  interrupted  Mr. 
Bruce. 

"Why  not?"  asked  Ben. 

"You  always  seem  taken  up  with  those 
people.  I  don't  see  how  you  can  be,  all 
so  patronizing  as  they  are." 

"Patronizing!"  repeated  Ben  to  him 
self.  "Miss  Theodora  patronizing!" 
How  far  from  the  truth  this  seemed ! 

"You  do  not  mean  Miss  Theodora?" 

"Why  not  Miss  Theodora?    She  walks 


90  MISS  THEODORA 

along  the  street,  never  looking  to  the 
right  or  left,  as  if  she  were  quite  too  good 
to  speak  to  ordinary  people." 

"But  she  is  terribly  near-sighted.  She 
does  not  see  people  unless  they  are  right 
in  front  of  her." 

"I  guess  she  could  see  well  enough  if 
she  tried.  I've  noticed  her  cross  the 
street  almost  on  a  run  to  speak  to  some 
little  black  boy.  She's  ready  enough  to 
take  up  with  people  like  that;  and  she's 
able  to  see  you.  Ben, — but — " 

Ben  flushed  a  little.  He  did  not  like 
being  put  on  a  level  with  Miss  Theo 
dora's  black  proteges.  Nor  was  this  all. 
Mr.  Bruce,  taking  up  his  wife's  words, 
continued : 

"Yes,  it's  just  as  your  mother  says ;  all 
those  people  think  themselves  a  great 
way  above  the  rest  of  us  that  are  just  as 
good  as  they  are.  I  don't  blame  Miss 
Theodora  so  much,  for  her  father  really 
was  a  great  man.  But  those  Digbys ! 
Who  are  they?  Why,  Mrs.  Stuart 


MISS  THEODORA  91 

Oigby's  grandfather,  they  say,  was  a 
tailor  in  New  York  when  my  grandfather 
was  one  of  General  Washington's  staff 
officers.  We  didn't  have  to  buy  that 
sword  in  our  parlor  second-hand  in  a 
Cornhill  shop,  where  some  people  get 
their  family  relics." 

"Not  the  Digbys  or  Miss  Theodora." 
"About  the  Digbys  I'm  not  so  sure. 
Miss  Theodora  ought  to  have  some  good 
things,  if  they  didn't  sell  off  everything 
when  they  went  into  that  little  house." 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  kin  of  Mr.  Bruce 
were  so  few  that  Ben  could  not  under 
stand  how  he  could  generalize  about 
them.  Yet,  "my  family"  could  not  have 
figured  more  largely  in  his  conversation, 
had  he  been  chieftain  of  a  Scottish  clan. 
So  rapid  was  Mr.  Bruce's  flow  of  lan 
guage,  that  Ben  and  his  mother  usually 
kept  quiet  when  he  was  well  launched  on 
any  subject.  Often,  indeed,  Ben  let  his 
thoughts  wander  far  away  until  recalled 
to  himself  by  some  direct  question. 


92  MISS  THEODORA 

It  was  Kate,  Kate  alone,  whom  his 
father's  words  touched.  For  the  mo 
ment  he  felt  that  he  might  be  perfectly 
happy  could  he  see  with  the  bodily  eye 
as  small  a  gulf  between  the  Digby  family 
and  his  own  as  his  father  presented  to 
his  mental  vision.  Seated  before  Miss 
Theodora's  hospitable  fire,  watching  the 
color  deepen  on  Kate's  sensitive  cheeks 
as  the  light  flickered  across  them,  he  for 
got  everything  but  her.  In  Ralph's  pres 
ence,  however,  he  realized  that  his  world 
and  the  Digbys'  were  very  far  apart,  and 
that  his  own  awkwardness  and  rough 
ness  must  be  felt  all  too  strongly  by 
Kate.  Then  for  weeks  he  would  avoid 
Miss  Theodora's  house  when  Kate  was 
there,  or  would  run  in  for  only  a  mp- 
ment  with  Ernest  to  inspect  some  won 
derful  invention  by  the  latter  then  in  pro 
cess  of  development  in  the  basement 
workroom.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Stuart  Digby 
he  seldom  thought  of.  But  how  to  bridge 
the  gulf  between  himself  and  Kate ! 


MISS  THEODORA  93 

The  story  of  his  own  good  ancestry 
began  to  have  new  interest  for  him.  He 
looked  more  closely  at  his  little  sisters. 
They  had  the  delicacy  of  feature  which 
their  mother  still  retained.  They  had  the 
wax-like  color  which  she  had  long  ago 
lost.  He  glanced  around  the  shabby 
room  and  felt  rebellious.  Should  they  be 
restricted  to  the  same  narrow  life  as  their 
mother's?  Was  poverty  to  keep  them 
down  as  it  kept  down  so  many  of  their 
neighbors?  No,  no!  he  would  devote 
himself  to  building  up  a  fortune,  and 
then — even  here  Kate  began  to  be  curi 
ously  mixed  up  with  his  musings,  and 
then  he  was  called  back  to  earth  by  his 
mother's  voice. 

The  claim  of  his  ancestors  had  never 
made  a  very  strong  impression  on  Ben. 
He  had  classed  them  with  certain  other 
harmless  pretences  of  his  mother's,  like 
making  a  rug  in  the  parlor  cover  an  un- 
mendable  hole  in  the  carpet,  or  putting 
lace  curtains  in  the  front  windows  of  an 


94  MISS  THEODORA 

upper  room  which  in  other  respects  was 
meagerly  furnished.  But  now  his  point 
of  view  had  begun  to  change,  and  he 
could  even  imagine  himself  in  time  bow 
ing  to  the  fetich  of  family. 

"What's  the  matter,  Polly?"  he  said 
one  afternoon  to  his  youngest  sister, 
whom  he  found  sitting  on  the  doorstep 
by  herself  with  the  traces  of  tears  on  her 
face. 

"Oh,  Ada  Green  says  that  my  new 
winter  dress  is  only  an  old  one  because 
it's  made  out  of  an  old  one  of  mother's ; 
and,"  incoherently,  "she  had  ice-cream 
for  dinner — and  why  can't  we?" 

"Who,  mother?"  laughed  Ben. 

"No,  you  know  who  I  mean,  Ada — 
they  have  ice-cream  every  Saturday,  and 
she  always  comes  out  and  tells  me,  and 
asks  me  what  day  we  have  ice-cream, 
and  I  have  to  say  'Never.' ''' 

Ben,  though  he  saw  the  ludicrous  side 
of  the  little  girl's  grief,  kissed  her  as  he 
had  many  a  time  before  when  she  had 
been  disturbed  by  similar  things. 


MISS  THEODORA  95 

"Cheer  up,"  he  said;  "it  won't  be  so 
very  long  before  I  can  give  you  ice 
cream  every  day,  and  new  dresses  not 
made  out  of  mother's  old  ones.  Then 
you  can  walk  up  and  down  the  sidewalk 
and  tell  Ada  Green ;  or  you  can  offer  her 
some  of  your  ice-cream, — heap  coals  of 
ice  on  her  head." 

He  added  more  of  this  nonsense  until 
the  child's  face  brightened  as  she  en 
tered  the  house,  clinging  to  his  arm,  and 
mounted  the  attic  stairs  to  sit  near  him 
while  he  studied. 

Ben's  plans  for  the  future  were  defin 
ite,  and  his  hopes  were  not  the  mere  self- 
confidence  of  youth.  Fortunate  in  secur 
ing  one  of  the  state  scholarships  at  the 
Institute,  he  had  been  told  by  his 
teachers  that  a  high  place  in  his  profes 
sion,  that  of  civil  engineer,  might  be  his 
ultimately.  But  "ultimately"  meant  a 
long  time  yet,  and  his  sister  was  perhaps 
right  in  sighing  that  before  he  could 
give  her  ice-cream  and  similar  delights, 


96  MISS  THEODORA 

she  would  be  too  "grown  up"  to  enjoy 
them. 

When,  therefore,  he  looked  at  his  little 
sisters  and  thought  of  the  probable  nar 
rowness  of  their  lives  unless  he  should 
interpose,  he  put  aside  any  idle  balancing 
of  merits  of  his  family  as  compared  with 
that  of  Stuart  Digby. 


XI. 

Ernest  stood  leaning  against  the  man 
telpiece  in  his  aunt's  bedroom.  Never 
enthusiastic  about  college,  he  was  grow 
ing  even  less  so  under  the  shadow  of  the 
impending  examinations,  now  but  a 
month  away.  His  preliminaries  had 
given  him  a  hint  that  only  by  hard  work 
could  he  enter  college  without  condi 
tions.  Greek  was  the  great  stumbling- 
block,  and  he  dreaded  the  final  test  more 
than  he  cared  to  admit. 

"Do  change  your  mind,  Aunt  Teddy," 
he  began  imploringly. 


98  MISS  THEODORA 

His  aunt,  in  a  low,  straight-backed 
chair,  looked  up  from  her  sewing. 

"Change  my  mind  about  what?" 

"Oh,  you  know — going  to  Harvard, 
Why  must  I  go?" 

Miss  Theodora  sighed.  Had  she 
waited  and  saved,  pleased  by  the  hope  of 
a  distinguished  college  career  for  Ernest, 
only  to  find  college  with  him  a  question 
not  of  "will"  but  of  "must"?  Ernest 
caught  her  look  of  disappointment. 

"Of  course  I  am  perfectly  willing  to  go 
to  Harvard  to  please  you,  but — I  wish 
I  could  study  the  things  Ben  studies." 

Miss  Theodora's  voice  had  an  un 
wonted  note  of  sternness  in  it. 

"You  are  going  to  Harvard,  Ernest, 
not  because  I  wish  it,  but  because  your 
father  wished  it ;  because  your  father, 
your  grandfather,  your  great-grand 
father,  five  generations,  all  were  gradu 
ates.  You  will  be  the  sixth  of  our  family 
in  direct  line  to  graduate  with  honor." 

"Perhaps  it  won't  be  with  honor  in  my 


MISS  THEODORA  99 

case,  Aunt  Teddy.  Remember  my 
Greek." 

Miss  Theodora  smiled.  "I  have  tried 
to  forget  it."  Then  as  Ernest  leaned 
down  to  kiss  her,  "No,  no.  I  can't  be 
coaxed  into  saying  what  I  don't  think. 
Of  course  you  will  go  to  Harvard  and  be 
an  honor  to  your  family." 

He  loved  his  aunt ;  he  wished  to  please 
her;  but,  oh,  if  he  could  only  beg  off 
from  college !  If  he  could  only  follow 
Ben  to  his  scientific  school !  Ben,  no 
one  could  deny  it,  would  be  a  great  man, 
and  Ben  had  not  gone  to  Harvard.  Ben 
and  Ralph  in  contrast  presented  them 
selves  to  Ernest's  mind  as  his  aunt  spoke 
of  the  "honor  of  the  family."  Changing 
his  lounging  position,  he  stood  in  an  atti 
tude  of  direct  interrogation  before  Miss 
Theodora. 

"Now,  Aunt  Teddy,  which  is  going  to 
be  a  great  man,  Ben  or  Ralph?" 

"I  am  no  prophet,  Ernest." 

"Oh,  well,  you  know  what  I  mean. 


ioo          MISS  THEODORA 

Would  you  rather  have  me  grow  up  like 
Ben  or  like  Ralph?" 

"I  am  fond  of  Ben." 

"Yes,  and  you  don't  like  Ralph  a  bit 
better  than  I  do.  He  can  write  Greek 
exercises  that  are  nearly  perfect, — and 
Ben  don't  know  Alpha  from  Omega." 

"You  seem  to  believe  that  Ben's  good 
qualities  result  from  his  ignorance  of 
Greek,  and  Ralph's  from  his  knowledge 
of  the  classics." 

"I  am  not  so  silly  as  that,  Aunt  Teddy. 
But  Ralph  won't  be  a  great  honor  to  the 
family  even  if  he  should  go  through  Har 
vard  twenty  times,  and  I  wouldn't  be  a 
disgrace  to  you  even  if  I  didn't  know 
Greek,  or  law,  or  any  of  those  things." 

As  Ernest  seldom  spoke  so  bitterly  on 
this  subject,  Miss  Theodora  wisely 
avoided  further  discussion  by  turning  to 
her  writing-table. 

"I  have  a  letter  to  finish  now,  Ernest ; 
why  do  you  not  go  down  to  your  work 
room?  Kate  is  anxious  for  the  table  you 
promised  her." 


MISS  THEODORA  101 

Ernest  went  off  to  his  work,  while 
Miss  Theodora,  still  sitting  before  the 
fire  thinking  lovingly  of  the  boy,  pict 
ured  him  in  the  not  remote  future  a 
worthy  wearer  of  the  legal  honor  of  the 
family.  When  Miss  Theodora  said 
"family,"  she  thought  most  often  of  a 
long  line  of  Massachusetts  ancestors  of 
dignified  demeanor  and  studious  expres 
sion,  all  resembling  in  general  features 
the  portrait  of  her  grandfather  hanging 
on  the  library  wall.  This  portrait  her 
own  father  had  had  enlarged  from  a 
poorly  executed  miniature.  Perhaps  it 
was  the  painter's  fault  that  the  nose  had 
an  air  of  intellectuality — even  more  ex 
aggerated  than  that  of  the  high  forehead. 
Ernest  as  a  little  boy  was  so  frightened 
by  this  portrait  that  he  did  not  like  to  be 
left  alone  in  the  room  with  it. 

As  he  grew  older,  it  over-awed  him 
like  the  rows  of  sheepskin-covered  vol 
umes  in  the  bookcases  under  the  paint 
ing.  Miss  Theodora,  loving  the  books  as 


102          MISS  THEODORA 

she  loved  the  portrait,  occasionally  would 
unlock  the  glass  door  with  its  faded  red 
silk  curtains  to  show  Ernest  the  volumes 
that  his  grandfather  and  his  great-great 
grandfather  had  studied.  As  he  grew 
older,  she  solemnly  intrusted  the  key  to 
his  care,  hoping  that  he  would  find  the 
books  as  pleasant  reading  as  she  had 
found  them  in  her  girlhood.  But  the 
clumsy  type  and  the  old-fashioned  style 
were  so  forbidding  to  the  boy,  that  his 
aunt  saw  with  sorrow  that  he  made  no 
effort  to  acquire  a  love  for  eighteenth- 
century  literature.  He  managed,  to  be 
sure,  to  read  the  few  "Spectator"  and 
"Tatler"  essays  which  she  selected,  and 
he  discovered  for  himself  the  amusing 
qualities  of  Addison's  "Rosamond."  His 
"Robinson  Crusoe"  in  modern  dress 
counted  of  course  as  a  book  of  to-day 
rather  than  as  a  work  of  the  Age  of 
Anne.  Had  it  been  among  its  sheep 
skin  covered  contemporaries,  more  than 
half  its  charm  would  have  vanished.  The 


MISS  THEODORA  103 

Coke,  the  Blackstone,  the  Kent,  which 
had  been  part  of  his  grandfather's  pro 
fessional  library,  the  boy  regarded  with 
even  less  interest  than  the  other  books. 
Miss  Theodora  had  told  Ernest  that 
many  would  be  as  useful  to  him  as  they 
had  been  to  his  grandfather,  not  realizing 
that  the  mere  thought  of  mastering  their 
musty  contents  increased  his  distaste  for 
the  law. 

Strangely  enough,  too,  Ernest  found 
little  glamour  in  thename"Harvard."  A> 
a  child  he  had  been  curious  about  the 
meaning  of  Class  Day,  when  he  heard 
caterers'  carts  rumbling  through  Charles 
Street  on  their  way  to  Cambridge,  or  saw 
gayly  dressed  girls  with  deferential  es 
corts  walking  toward  the  horse-cars  or 
driving  over  the  bridge.  When  he  grew 
older  the  name  of  Harvard  was  associ 
ated  with  boat  races  and  ball  games,  and 
it  pleased  him  to  think  that  he  might 
some  time  count  himself  among  the 
wearers  of  the  victorious  crimson.  But 


104          MISS  THEODORA 

the  dreaded  examinations  and  a  truer 
knowledge  of  what  the  study  of  law 
meant  had  at  last  made  the  name  of  Har 
vard  a  bugbear. 

While  Miss  Theodora,  therefore, 
mused  before  the  fire,  Ernest  in  his  base 
ment  workshop  let  his  thoughts  wander 
far  afield  from  Harvard  and  the  musty 
law.  He  wondered  if  he  could  make  a 
dynamo  according  to  the  directions  laid 
down  in  a  new  book  of  physics  he  had 
lately  read.  He  wondered  if  he  should 
ever  have  a  chance  to  go  West  to  the  sil 
ver  mines — for  this  was  about  the  time 
when  all  eyes  were  turned  toward  the 
splendors  of  Leadville.  He  wondered  if 
he  should  ever  invent  anything  like  that 
marvellous  telephone  of  which  the  world 
was  beginning  to  talk  so  much.  He 
knew  a  fellow  whose  uncle  had  been 
present  at  a  private  exhibition  of  the  new 
invention,  and  the  uncle  had  been  sure 
that  in  a  short  time  people  a  mile  apart 
would  be  able  to  exchange  actual  words 
over  the  wire. 


MISS  THEODORA  105 

*As  to  the  dynamo,  Ernest  felt  pretty 
sure  that  he  would  make  one ;  as  to  the 
mines  of  the  West  he  was  equally  confi 
dent  that  he  would  see  them  some  day; 
hadn't  he  always  promised  when  he 
was  a  man  to  take  his  aunt  on  a  long 
journey?  But  as  to  rivalling  the  inven 
tor  of  the  telephone,  ah,  no !  what  chance 
would  he  have  to  invent  anything,  when 
four  years,  four  long  years,  must  be  spent 
at  college,  and  at  least  two  years  more  in 
preparing  for  the  bar? 

"Alas,  Harvard !"  sighed  Ernest  in  the 
basement,  while  "fair  Harvard"  formed 
the  burden  of  Miss  Theodora's  thoughts 
as  she  sat  by  the  fire  upstairs. 


XII. 

After  all,  Ernest  entered  Harvard 
creditably.  To  work  off  two  or  three 
conditions  would  be  a  very  small  mat 
ter, — so  he  thought  optimistically  at  the 
beginning  of  the  year.  On  the  whole, 


MISS  THEODORA  107 

college  had  an  unexpected  charm  for 
him,  and  he  showed  a  temper  in  Novem 
ber  quite  different  from  that  of  the 
spring.  Perhaps  the  summer's  tour  in 
Europe,  which  he  had  made  with  Ralph 
and  Ralph's  tutor,  had  changed  his  point 
of  view.  Miss  Theodora  could  not  feel 
grateful  enough  to  Stuart  Digby  for 
sending  Ernest  to  Europe.  Though  she 
had  herself  set  aside  a  little  sum  for  this 
purpose,  she  was  only  too  glad  to  accept 
her  cousin's  offer. 

When  the  boys  came  home,  their 
friends  noted  a  change  in  Ernest.  Mrs. 
Fetchum  thought  that  it  was  largely  in 
the  matter  of  clothes. 

"You  couldn't  expect  but  what  such 
stylish  clothes  would  make  a  difference, 
at  least  in  appearance;  not  but  what 
Ernest  himself  is  just  the  same  as  he  used 
to  be." 

Justice  drove  Mrs.  Fetchum  to  this 
admission ;  for  when  Ernest,  walking  up 
the  hill  a  few  days  after  his  home  com- 


io8          MISS  THEODORA 

ing,  caught  sight  of  her  as  she  stood 
within  her  half-open  door,  not  only  had 
he  stopped  to  speak  to  her,  but  he  had 
run  up  the  steps  to  shake  hands ;  this,  too 
— for  it  was  Sunday — in  sight  of  several 
neighbors  who  were  passing,  and  under 
the  very  eyes  of  certain  inquisitive  faces 
looking  from  windows  near  by, — a  most 
gratifying  remembrance  to  Mrs, 
Fetchum. 

"Ernest  looks  some  different,"  said 
Mrs.  Fetchum,  describing  the  interview 
to  Mr.  Fetchum,  "but  his  heart's  in  the 
right  place.  He  said  he  ain't  seen  a 
place  he  liked  better  than  Boston  in  all 
the  course  of  his  travels." 

Miss  Chatterwits,  who  never  agreed 
with  any  opinion  of  her  neighbors,  de 
clared  that  Ernest  was  changed. 

"But  it  isn't  his  clothes.  If  I  do  make 
dresses,  I  don't  think  that  clothes  is 
everything.  It's  his  manners.  You  can 
see  it,  Miss  Theodora, — just  a  little  more 
polish.  It's  perfectly  natural,  you  know, 


MISS  THEODORA  109 

since  he's  come  in  contact,  so  to  speak, 
with  foreign  courts.  Didn't  he  say  that 
lie  saw  the  royal  family  riding  in  a  pro 
cession  in  London,  and  didn't  he  and 
Ralph  go  to  dinner  at  the  American  min 
ister's  at  The  Hague?  Those  things  of 
course  count." 

Miss  Chattenvits,  like  many  others 
who  take  pride  in  their  republicanism, 
dearly  loved  to  hear  about  royalty.  Er 
nest,  therfore,  when  he  found  that  she 
was  somewhat  disappointed  that  he 
could  not  tell  her  more  about  kings  and 
queens,  gave  her  elaborate  accounts  of 
the  palaces  he  had  visited.  Thus  did  he 
half  solace  her  for  the  fact  that  he  had 
had  no  personal  interviews  with  princes 
and  other  potentates. 

Yet,  although  Miss  Chatterwits  would 
not  ascribe  any  change  in  Ernest  to  his 
clothes,  she  by  no  means  overlooked  the 
extent  and  variety  of  the  wardrobe  which 
he  had  brought  back  with  him  from  the 
other  side.  In  this  respect  Stuart  Digby 


no          MISS  THEODORA 

had  been  as  generous  as  in  everything  else 
connected  with  Ernest's  foreign  journey. 
His  orders  that  Ernest  should  have  an 
outfit  of  London  clothes  in  no  way  in 
ferior  to  Ralph's  had  been  literally  car 
ried  out.  The  result  was  startling,  not 
only  in  the  matter  of  coats,  waistcoats 
and  other  necessities,  but  in  the  matter  of 
walking  sticks,  umbrellas,  and  similar 
luxuries. 

For  almost  a  week  Ernest  kept  the 
neighborhood  astir  counting  his  various 
new  suits.  Boy-like,  he  mischievously 
wore  them  one  by  one  on  successive  days 
for  the  mere  sake  of  giving  Mrs.  Fetchum 
and  the  others  something  to  talk  about. 
To  Miss  Chatterwits  he  gladly  lent  his 
cloth  travelling  cap,  when  she  expressed 
her  wish  to  take  a  pattern  of  it,  and  he 
let  her  carefully  inspect  a  certain  over 
coat. 

"It's  quite  at  your  service,  Miss  Chat 
terwits,  although  I  more  than  half  be 
lieve  you  are  going  to  cut  one  just  like 


MISS  THEODORA  in 

it  for  little  Tommie  Grigsby.  Just  think 
of  it,  the  latest  London  fashions  for  a 
six-year  old." 

Nor  did  Miss  Chatterwits  deny  the  im 
plication.  For  in  those  days,  when  you 
could  not  buy  ready-made  clothes  in 
every  shop,  the  costume  of  many  a  little 
West  End  boy  was  cut  over  from  his 
father's  garments  by  the  hands  of  the  old 
seamstress. 

Miss  Theodora  did  not  find  Ernest 
changed.  "Improved,  perhaps,  but  not 
changed  by  his  summer  abroad,"  she 
said  to  herself,  seeing  in  this  no  real  con 
tradiction.  He  was  still  the  same  Ernest 
— respectful,  kind,  yielding  to  her  will, 
even  in  the  many  details  connected  with 
the  furnishing  of  his  rooms  at  Cambridge 
— the  same  Ernest  who  years  ago  had 
clung  to  her  hand  dark  evenings  as  they 
walked  home  from  Stuart  Digby's.  All 
the  interested  relatives — "all,"  yet  few — 
wondered  that  Miss  Theodora  could  af 
ford  to  fit  up  Ernest's  college  rooms  so 


ii2          MISS  THEODORA 

handsomely.  But  was  it  not  for  this  that 
she  had  saved  ever  since  John's  death? 

So  Ernest,  in  Hollis,  had  the  counter 
part  of  John's  old  room ;  and  his  aunt, 
looking  from  the  broad  window-seat 
across  the  leafy  quadrangle,  unchanged 
in  aspect  through  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
felt  herself  carried  back  to  those  early 
days.  Until  John's  death  she  had  not 
realized  that  all  her  hopes  were  centred 
in  him.  Now  she  knew  only  too  well 
that  life  without  Ernest  would  mean  little 
enough  to  her. 

Ernest,  appreciating  his  aunt's  devo 
tion,  tried  to  repay  it  by  thorough  work 
— tried,  yet  failed.  For,  after  all,  study 
is  not  the  only  absorbing  interest  at 
Cambridge.  Sports  in  the  field,  practice 
on  the  river,  these  stir  the  blood  and 
take  a  young  man's  time.  A  good-look 
ing  lad  with  a  well-known  name,  con 
nected  with  various  families  of  reputed 
wealth  and  high  position,  has  every 
chance  for  popularity  at  Harvard.  But 


MISS  THEODORA  113 

a  popular  man  with  limited  means  has  to 
pay  a  price  for  popularity.  Ernest  spent 
his  fairly  liberal  allowance  to  the  last  cent. 
He  had  to  entertain,  had  to  do  things 
that  were,  though  he  knew  it  not,  a  great 
strain  on  his  aunt's  purse.  Though  he 
had  entered  college  without  the  social 
advantages  of  a  preparation  at  one  of  the 
private  schools,  he  soon  had  many 
friends.  Miss  Theodora  was  pleased 
with  her  nephew's  success.  John  had 
been  popular,  and  it  would  have  been 
strange  indeed  had  the  son  not  followed 
in  the  father's  footsteps.  She  could  not 
conceal  from  herself,  however,  a  defi 
nite  uneasiness  that  Ernest,  unlike  his 
father,  showed  little  interest  in  his 
studies.  He  grumbled  not  a  little  at  the 
course  laid  out  for  him,  complained  that 
he  would  have  hardly  a  wider  choice  of 
studies  in  his  sophomore  year,  and  as 
cribed  all  his  shortcomings  in  examina 
tions  to  the  fact  that  he  was  rigorously 
held  down  to  uncongenial  work.  Nor 


ii4          MISS  THEODORA 

was  he  altogether  wrong,  for  many  a 
Harvard  student  in  those  days  longed 
for  freedom  from  the  fetters  of  prescribed 
studies. 


XIII. 

One  Sunday  afternoon  in  the  early 
May  of  his  freshman  year,  after  the  ser 
vice  at  Trinity,  Ernest  took  his  way  tow 
ard  the  Digbys'  house.  Since  midwinter 
many  things  had  tended  to  make  him  re 
gard  life  less  hopefully  than  before. 
Just  as  his  own  shortcomings  at  college 
were  growing  so  evident  that  he  could 
not  conceal  them  either  from  himself  or 
his  aunt,  the  death  of  Stuart  Digby  cast 
a  cloud  over  him  which  made  other 


n6          MISS  THEODORA 

shadows  dwindle.  For  he  had  been  very 
fond  of  his  cousin,  and  he  sympathized  to 
the  full  with  Kate  in  her  grief. 

"Cut  off  in  his  prime!"  said  all  the 
friends  of  Stuart  Digby.  "So  much  to 
live  for!"  "His  life  hardly  half  fin 
ished!"  But,  after  all,  death  is  as  in 
scrutable  a  mystery  as  life  itself.  Stuart 
Digby  had  had  his  chance.  He  knew 
long  before  he  died  that  his  life,  even  if 
rounded  out  to  the  full  three  score  and 
ten,  could  never  be  full  and  complete. 
He  knew,  as  nobody  else  could,  how  far 
short  he  fell  of  the  standard  which  he  had 
once  set  for  himself.  He  knew,  with  a 
knowledge  that  cut  him  to  the  quick, 
that,  poor  slave  of  habit  that  he  had  be 
come,  no  length  of  life  would  place  him 
again  in  the  ranks  of  those  whose  faces 
ever  look  upward.  He  had  had  his 
chance.  Why  had  he  let  it  slip  away 
from  him?  His  life,  so  far  as  life  means 
progress,  was  finished  long  before.  He 
had  not  even  accomplished  the  few  defi- 


MISS  THEODORA  117 

nite  tasks  which  he  had  set  for  himself. 
Among  these  was  the  making  of  some 
provision  for  Ernest.  He  had  meant  to 
give  the  boy  a  few  thousands  to  smooth 
his  path  after  graduating,  or  to  leave  him 
something  by  will.  But  death  came  so 
suddenly  that  this,  like  many  other  good 
intentions,  was  unfulfilled.  Ernest, 
knowing  nothing  of  these  unfulfilled  in 
tentions,  felt  only  a  deep  sense  of  per 
sonal  loss  in  the  death  of  his  cousin. 

A  decorator  had  lately  done  over  in 
the  latest  French  style  the  room  where 
Kate  received  Ernest.  The  high  white 
wainscoting,  the  satiny  sheen  of  the 
large-patterned  yellow  paper,  the  slen 
der-legged  gilded  chairs,  with  here  and 
there  a  lounging  chair  covered  in  pale 
green  brocade,  harmonized  well  with  the 
sunshine  that  streamed  in.  Kate,  in  her 
black  gown,  seated  at  the  old-fashioned 
inlaid  desk  in  the  bay  window,  but  for 
her  fair  hair  and  glowing  color,  would 
have  been  the  one  discordant  note  in  the 


u8          MISS  THEODORA 

room.  The  solemn  man-servant  had 
hardly  announced  Ernest  when  Kate 
rushed  forward  to  meet  him. 

"Why,  Ernest,  I  am  delighted  to  see 
you.  We  were  speaking  of  you  today. 
Mamma  was  saying  that  it  seemed  a  long 
time  since  you  had  been  here.  She  is 
out  now,  and  will  be  sorry  to  miss  you." 

"Well,  it  is  longer  than  I  meant  to  be ; 
but  you  know  that  I've  really  been  very 
busy,  especially  since  the  mid-year.  I've 
been  trying  to  decide  several  difficult 
questions." 

"Oh,  yes,  I  know.  How  times  have 
changed,  Ernest,  since  you  used  to  play 
hop-scotch  with  the  Fetchum  chidren, 
while  I  sat,  a  mournful  umpire,  at  Cousin 
Theodora's  door !  You  used  to  say  that 
I  was  the  best  possible  judge;  and  I 
thought  that  you  were  always  going  to 
let  me  help  you  decide  difficult  ques 
tions." 

"It's  just  the  same  now,  Kate.  I'd  be 
only  too  glad  to  have  you  help  me  out  of 
a  good  many  things,  if " 


MISS  THEODORA  119 

"If  what?" 

Now,  however,  Ernest  dropped  his 
serious  tone.  "If  we  were  younger. 
Tell  me,  Kate,  can  you  remember  how 
you  felt  when  you  first  realized  that  you 
weren't  a  child  any  more?  I  was  think 
ing  about  myself  the  other  day,  and  won 
dering  why  I  feel  so  much  older  now 
than  I  did  a  year  or  two  ago." 

"Oh,  it's  going  into  college  that  is 
chiefly  to  answer  for  it.  But  I  do  think 
it's  strange  sometimes  all  in  an  instant 
we  realize  that  we  are  older  or  different 
from  what  we  were  before.  I  really 
can't  account  for  it." 

"Yes, — I  understand  what  you  mean. 
You  know  those  stone  buildings  that  we 
pass  on  our  way  to  the  Nahant  boat. 
Well,  they  used  to  seem  to  me  mountain 
high,  not  only  when  I  looked  up  at  them, 
but  when  I  thought  about  them.  But 
one  summer,  years  ago,  I  looked  up  and 
saw  that  they  were  not  very  high,  nor 
very  imposing.  They  were  small  build- 


120          MISS  THEODORA 

ings,  compared  with  a  good  many  up 
town;  and  then  I  felt  that  I  must  have 
changed." 

Kate  smiled.  "Yes,  I've  been  through 
just  such  things  myself."  And  the  con 
versation  of  the  two  cousins  drifted  on 
for  a  time,  with  reminiscences  of  the 
past. 

"Ernest,"  at  length  said  Kate  some 
what  abruptly  to  the  young  man,  "after 
all  you  are  more  or  less  of  a  disappoint 
ment  to  me." 

So  far  as  appearances  went,  it  was 
hard  to  see  wherein  Ernest  fell  short  of 
the  ideal  of  even  so  rigid  a  critic  as  Kate. 
Yet  this  well-formed,  muscular  youth, 
with  his  clear  gray  eye,  seemed  at  this 
particular  moment  a  little  restless  and 
uneasy  as  he  fingered  an  ivory  paper- 
knife. 

"How  do  I  disappoint  you,  Kate?"  he 
asked. 

"Oh,  in  many  ways.  I  used  to  think 
that  you  would  be  an  inventor,  or — 
something.  But  now — " 


MISS  THEODORA  121 

"I  am  nothing  but  a  Harvard  fresh 
man,"  he  broke  in  laughing. 

"Yes,  that  is  just  it.  You  don't  seem 
to  be  ambitious ;  you  aren't  trying  to 
work  off  your  entrance  conditions;  and 
you  didn't  do  well  at  the  mid-years.  You 
spend  very  little  time  with  Cousin  Theo 
dora.  I'm  sure  I  ought  to  feel  compli 
mented  that  you've  come  here  to-day." 
As  Ernest  did  not  reply,  she  continued : 
"Your  aunt  has  always  made  such  sacri 
fices  for  you  that  you  ought  to  try  to  do 
your  best.  Cousin  Richard  says — " 

There  she  stopped. 

"Well,  what  does  Cousin  Richard 
say?"  asked  Ernest  impatiently.  But 
Kate,  remembering  that  Richard  Somer 
set  might  object  to  being  quoted,  was 
silent. 

"Go  to  him  yourself,"  she  said  at 
length.  "He  will  tell  you."  Then  their 
conversation  passed  to  less  personal 
things,  until  it  was  time  for  Ernest  to  go. 

Ernest,  taking  what  Kate  had  said  in 


122  MISS  THEODORA 

good  part,  pondered  over  it  as  he  walked 
homeward.  The  afternoon  was  drawing 
to  a  close.  Long  afterward  he  recalled 
that  walk  among  the  flower-beds,  glow 
ing  with  tulips  and  hyacinths,  with  the 
last  rays  of  the  sun  reflected  from  the  lit 
tle  fountain,  while  the  chimes  from  the 
church  on  the  corner  above  rang  out 
"Old  Hundred."  As  he  left  the  Garden 
and  entered  Charles  Street  all  this  cheer 
fulness  was  at  an  end.  The  houses  cast 
shadows  so  heavy  in  the  narrow  street 
that  he  felt  as  if  in  another  world. 
Somewhat  depressed,  he  went  up  the  hill 
to  his  aunt's  house.  From  the  parlor 
came  the  unwonted  sound  of  music. 
Some  one  was  playing  on  the  old  piano. 
There  sat  Miss  Theodora.  He  saw  her 
through  a  half-opened  door,  playing 
with  a  fervor  that  he  could  not  have  be 
lieved  possible  had  he  not  seen  it  for 
himself.  For  a  moment  he  watched  her, 
and  although  he  was  not  a  learned  young 
man,  he  thought  at  once  of  St.  Cecilia. 


MISS  THEODORA  123 

There  was,  indeed,  more  than  a  mere 
suggestion  of  saintliness  in  Miss  Theo 
dora,  with  her  pale  face,  with  her  black 
hair  smoothly  brushed  away  and  gath 
ered  in  a  coil  behind,  and  her  patient  ex 
pression. 

"Why,  Aunt  Teddy,"  at  length  ex 
claimed  Ernest,  entering  the  room,  "I 
didn't  know  that  you  were  such  a  per 
former.  I  knew  you  could  play,  but  I 
didn't  know  you  could  play  like  that." 

"Thank  you,  Ernest,"  replied  his  aunt. 
"I  don't  play  well  now,  but  when  your 
grandfather  was  living  I  had  the  very 
best  instruction ;  but  my  style  is  so  old- 
fashioned  that  I  never  play  to  any  one 
now." 

In  truth,  Miss  Theodora  had  played 
well  in  her  day,  and  it  was  one  of  the 
sorrows  of  her  later  life  that  she  could 
not  profit  by  the  fine  teachers  and  the 
concerts  of  music-loving  Boston.  Di- 
antha,  whose  thirty  years'  devotion  to 
the  family  gave  her  privileges,  would 


124          MISS  THEODORA 

sometimes  come  to  her  as  she  sat  alone 
by  the  front  window  in  the  twilight,  and 
say: 

"Why  don't  you  never  play  no  music 
now,  Miss  Theodora?  I  ain't  forgot 
how  you  used  to  practice  all  the  time; 
and  Mr.  John  and  Mr.  William  would 
come  into  the  parlor  in  the  evenings  and 
listen  to  you,  and  you  used  to  look  so 
pretty  sitting  at  that  very  piano  that  you 
won't  never  touch  now." 

Yet  Ernest,  although  he  had  often 
heard  Diantha  thus  remonstrate  with  his 
aunt,  now  first  realized  perhaps  that 
there  was  undue  self-denial  in  his  aunt's 
life.  What  Kate  had  said  about  "sacri 
fices"  became  significant  to  him.  With 
as  little  delay  as  possible  he  would  talk 
with  Richard  Somerset. 


XIV. 

"Now,  Ernest,  I  don't  know  what 
Theodora  would  do  if  she  knew  that  I 
had  told  you,  but  since  you  insist  I  will 
say  that  your  father  left  you  nothing,  ab 
solutely  nothing.  He  invested  his  small 
share  of  your  grandfather's  property 
badly,  and  when  we  came  to  settle  things 
there  wasn't  a  cent  for  you."  So  said 
Richard  Somerset  in  the  interview  which 
Ernest  soon  sought. 

"So  all  that  I  have  is  just  that  much 
less  for  Aunt  Teddy?" 

"Yes, — if  you  put  it  that  way.       But 


126          MISS  THEODORA 

she  has  told  me  many  a  time  that  what 
ever  she  has  is  yours.  Just  you  do  your 
best  at  college,  and  become  a  clever  law 
yer  like  your  father  and  your  grand 
father,  and  she'll  be  satisfied.  You  see, 
you  are  all  she  has  in  the  world.  Of 
course,  if  she  had  married, — "  but  here 
the  good  man  grew  silent,  and  Ernest 
never  heard  from  him  the  story  of  Miss 
Theodora's  one  love  affair. 

It  was  just  as  well  that  he  stopped 
where  he  did,  for,  with  an  indiscretion 
worthy  a  younger  man,  he  had  already 
gone  far  beyond  Miss  Theodora's  in 
structions.  He  knew  that  it  was  her  one 
desire  that  Ernest  should  not  learn  that 
he  had  no  money  of  his  own.  When  Er 
nest  had  heard  the  truth,  much  that  pre 
viously  he  had  not  quite  understood  in 
his  aunt's  management  of  affairs  was  ex 
plained. 

"It's  all  very  well  to  talk  about  being  a 
lawyer,"  he  cried.  "It's  all  very  well  to 
talk ;  but  I  have  found  out  that  I  cannot 


MISS  THEODORA          127 

possibly  be  one.  It's  been  worrying  me 
lately.  Of  course,  I  might  go  through 
college  in  a  sort  of  way ;  but  after  what 
you  tell  me  I  can't  see  the  sense  in  wast 
ing  time  or  money." 

Richard  Somerset  looked  aghast.  Was 
this  the  effect  of  his  words?  What  would 
Miss  Theodora  say? 

"Why — why,  you  wouldn't  disappoint 
your  aunt  like  that,  would  you?  What  in 
the  world  would  you  do  if  you  left  col 
lege?" 

"Well,  I  don't  know  exactly,  but  I'm 
pretty  sure  that  I'd  take  a  course  like 
Ben  Bruce  has  had  at  the  Technology. 
Then  I'd  go  West  and  make  some 
money.  One  thing  I've  found  out  since 
I  went  to  College, — and  that  is  that  I 
don't  want  to  be  poor  the  rest  of  my 
life." 

"Everybody  who  goes  West  doesn't 
make  money." 

"Maybe  not,  but  I  met  a  man  crossing 
on  the  Altruria  this  summer,  who  told 


128          MISS  THEODORA 

me  that  mining  engineers  have  the  best 
possible  chance  now.  He's  a  large 
stockholder  in  the  'Wampum  and  Etna/ 
and  he  said  if  only  my  profession  were 
something  in  his  line  he  could  do  a  lot 
for  me." 

"Rather  presuming  for  a  stranger," 
said  Richard  Somerset,  with  the  true 
Boston  manner." 

"He  didn't  seem  like  a  stranger.  He 
used  to  know  my  father,  I  believe.  But 
he  said  it  wasn't  worth  while  to  mention 
him  to  Aunt  Theodora,  as  she  probably 
wouldn't  remember  him." 

"What  was  his  name?" 

"Easton — William  Easton.  I  have 
his  card  and  address  somewhere.  He 
used  to  be  an  army  officer,  captain  of 
engineers,  then  he  resigned  and  went 
into  mining.  He  worked  like  every 
thing  until  he  made  a  lucky  find.  He 
was  his  own  engineer  for  a  time,  but  now 
he's  given  up  active  work.  He  and  his 
wife  go  abroad  every  summer." 


MISS  THEODORA  129 

"No,  it  wasn't  worth  while  to  mention 
him  to  your  aunt,"  said  Richard  Somer 
set,  as  Ernest  left  him.  The  older  man 
gazed  abstractedly  after  the  boy,  while 
his  heart  went  out  in  sympathy  with  Miss 
Theodora. 

Between  Miss  Theodora  and  William 
Easton  there  had  once  been  an  engage 
ment,  known  only  to  their  most  intimate 
friends.  John's  classmate  and  comrade 
in  the  war,  he  had  never  concealed  his 
admiration  for  John's  sister.  It  was  just 
after  Dorothy's  death,  when  Ernest  de 
manded  all  Miss  Theodora's  time,  that 
William  Easton  was  ordered  to  the  west 
ern  frontier.  With  the  reorganization  of 
the  army  he  had  gone  into  the  Engi 
neers,  and  now  there  was  no  chance,  had 
he  wished,  to  evade  the  duty  to  which  he 
was  assigned.  He  might  stay  at  his  new 
post  four  or  five  years,  he  said,  and 
Theodora  must  marry  him  and  go  too. 
Always  imperative,  he  tried  hard  enough 
to  carry  his  point.  But  for  Ernest's 


130          MISS  THEODORA 

claims     Miss    Theodora    would     have 
yielded. 

"Ernest  will  come,  too,  of  course,"  he 
said, — and  failed,  obstinately  perhaps, 
to  see  the  weight  of  Miss  Theodora's  ob 
jections.  The  locality  to  which  he  was 
bound  was  notoriously  unhealthy.  The 
surroundings  would  be  in  other  respects 
unfavorable  to  the  little  boy, — and  what 
chance  would  he  have  for  an  education 
in  that  remote  and  half-civilized  region? 
Nor  would  Miss  Theodora  leave  the 
child  behind,  even  had  there  been  any 
one  with  whom  she  could  leave  him. 
Surely  she  and  William  could  wait.  But 
William  Easton,  always  impatient,  went 
off  to  his  distant  post  angry  that  Theo 
dora  should  prefer  a  little  child  to  him. 
Both  were  heart-sore  at  first,  but  time 
works  wonders,  and  years  after  this  part 
ing,  when  Miss  Theodora  heard  that  he 
had  married  the  daughter  of  a  Colorado 
rancher,  she  hoped,  yes,  she  really  hoped, 
that  he  was  happy. 


MISS  THEODORA          131 

Ernest  did  not  recognize  as  William 
Easton,  his  steamboat  acquaintance,  tHe 
young  officer  who  stood  beside  his  father 
in  the  little  faded  photograph  on  his 
aunt's  dressing  table.  What  queer, 
loose-fitting  uniforms  they  had !  We'd 
smile  if  men  wore  their  hair  so  long  as 
that  now."  This  was  all  the  boy  had 
thought,  as  he  looked  at  the  picture. 
But  for  Miss  Theodora  these  two  faded 
figures  symbolized  her  heart's  whole  his 
tory. 

To  keep  Ernest  from  thinking  much 
about  money  matters,  Miss  Theodora 
had  discouraged  intimacies  with  her 
richer  distant  relatives — excepting  only 
the  Digbys.  This  one  exception  in  the 
case  of  the  Digbys  needed  no  justifica 
tion  in  her  mind.  Had  not  Stuart  been 
John's  best  friend?  Thus  Ernest,  grow 
ing  up  in  the  simple  West  End  neighbor 
hood,  had  little  opportunity  to  make  un 
comfortable  contrasts  between  his  aunt's 
way  of  living  and  that  of  richer  people. 


132          MISS  THEODORA 

Had  Ralph  and  Ernest  been  more  con 
genial,  Ernest  might  have  been  drawn 
into  Ralph's  set,  made  up  of  the  boys  of 
his  own  age  with  the  largest  claims  on 
the  so-called  society  of  Boston.  As  it 
had  been,  Ralph  and  his  friends  formed 
a  little  world  apart  from  Ernest  and  his 
interests.  With  Ben  as  full  confidant 
and  adviser,  Ernest  was  naturally  well 
content  with  his  own  lot.  For  Ben,  with 
so  much  less  than  Ernest  had  of  the 
things  that  money  gives,  was  always 
happy — apparently  happy  and  absorbed 
in  his  studies.  Ernest  knew  of  course 
that  he  himself  must  be  economical, — his 
aunt  had  often  said  so ;  but  sometimes  he 
thought  that  this  economy  was  only  one 
of  her  fancies, — she  was  so  unlike  other 
people  in  many  ways.  Especially  prob 
able  did  this  seem  when  she  gave  him  a 
liberal  allowance  for  Harvard.  He  did 
not  know,  until  Richard  Somerset  told 
him,  that  a  bank  failure  a  few  years  be 
fore  had  taken  five  thousand  dollars  of 
Miss  Theodora's  small  capital,  and  that 


MISS  THEODORA          133 

a  mortgage  of  almost  the  same  amount 
had  been  put  on  the  house  to  enable  her 
to  carry  out  her  plans  for  Ernest. 

But  Ernest's  happy  ignorance  was 
now  at  an  end.  If  his  summer  in  Eu 
rope,  his  year  in  college,  had  done  noth 
ing  else  for  him,  these  things  had  given 
him  a  desire  for  a  larger  life  than  he  had 
had.  Unless  they  take  form  in  action 
desires  of  this  kind  may  end  in  mere  dis 
content,  to  eat  into  the  heart  of  their  pos 
sessor.  Rightly  directed,  they  will  carry 
him  along  a  path  at  the  end  of  which, 
even  if  unsuccessful,  he  will  at  least  have 
pleasure  in  remembering  that  he  tried  to 
reach  a  definite  goal. 

Thus  Ernest,  disturbed  by  the  fact  that 
his  college  course  was  less  satisfactory  to 
him  than  he  had  expected  it  to  be,  con 
fronted  by  the  knowledge  that  money,  or 
lack  of  money,  plays  a  large  part  in 
every-day  affairs,  overwhelmed  by  his 
discovery  of  the  meagreness  of  his  aunt's 
possessions,  still  hesitated  a  little  as  to 
his  own  duty. 


xv. 

Ernest's  final  decision  was  closely  in 
terwoven  with  a  ride  from  Cambridge  in 
an  open  horse-car  one  warm  spring 
evening.  Though  his  mind  during  this 
ride  was  constantly  going  over  the  sub 
ject  that  now  lay  near  his  heart,  it  after 
ward  seemed  to  him  as  if  he  could  recall 
every  step  of  the  way,  so  curiously  some 
times  does  the  external  world  weave 
itself  into  our  mental  processes.  Long 


MISS  THEODORA  135 

afterward  he  remembered  that  at  first  in 
the  dim  light  he  had  noticed  people, 
young  and  old,  children  or  girls  in  light 
dresses,  sitting  on  the  piazzas  or  moving 
about  the  wide  lawns  of  the  houses  near 
the  Square.  Next  he  saw  the  business 
blocks  with  their  shops,  in  front  of  which 
groups  of  young  men  were  lounging. 
Over-dressed  girls  and  other  young  men 
promenaded  the  sidewalks  in  front  of  the 
shops,  and  he  caught  the  occasional  note 
of  a  loud  laugh  or  a  flippant  remark. 
Farther  on,  rows  of  unpretentious  dwell 
ings,  ending  at  last  in  unmistakable 
tenement  houses,  stamped  themselves  on 
his  mind,  with  half-tidy  women,  men  in 
their  shirt  sleeves,  and  little  children 
crowding  the  doorways.  Across  the 
muddy  flats  and  the  broad  river  they 
might  see,  as  he  saw,  the  pretty  hilly 
country  beyond.  Were  they  gossiping 
and  scolding,  much  as  they  would  gossip 
and  scold  in  their  narrow  room?  Per 
haps  for  the  time,  like  Ernest  himself, 


136          MISS  THEODORA 

they  knew  the  peaceful  influence  of  the 
perfect  evening. 

The  indescribable  May  softness  had, 
he  felt  sure,  more  than  a  little  to  do  with 
his  own  exultation.  His  way  opened 
perfectly  clear  before  him.  The  argu 
ments  that  he  should  use  with  his  aunt 
stood  out  plainly  defined.  Go  on  longer 
as  he  had  been  doing! — he  shivered  at 
the  thought. 

Finding  Miss  Theodora  alone  in  the 
twilight,  he  realized  as  never  before  the 
pathos  of  her  lonely  life.  In  saying  what 
he  was  going  to  say  he  knew  that  he 
must  shatter  one  of  her  cherished  idols. 

"In  time,  of  course,  she'll  know  that  I 
have  been  right,"  he  said  to  himself. 
Yet  it  required  more  than  a  little  courage 
to  speak,  to  argue  with  her  against 
things  that  he  knew  she  held  so  dear. 

Though  he  hardly  knew  how  it  came 
about,  the  discussion  ended,  to  Ernest's 
own  surprise,  with  the  advantage  on  his 
side.  His  skilful  fashion  of  handling 


MISS  THEODORA  137 

statistics  told  strongly  in  his  favor,  per 
haps;  for  he  proved  to  his  aunt's  satis 
faction  that  it  would  be  many,  many 
years  before  he  could  probably  support 
himself  on  a  lawyer's  income.  He  had 
figures  and  facts  to  show  what  he  was 
certain  to  earn  as  soon  as  he  began  to 
practise  engineering. 

"But,  Ernest,"  said  Miss  Theodora,  "if 
you  do  not  want  to  be  a  lawyer  after  you 
are  graduated,  there  are  many  other 
things  you  might  do  without  sacrificing 
your  position  in  life."  For  although 
Miss  Theodora  knew  well  enough  that 
mining  engineers  were  not  the  same  as 
the  engineers  whom  she  had  seen  on 
locomotives  and  steamboats,  yet  she  felt 
that  engineers  in  general,  by  reason  of 
grimy  hands  and  faces,  were  forever  cut 
off  from  good  society. 

"What  else  can  I  find  to  do?"  he  in 
sisted,  "that  would  be  as  interesting  and 
pay  as  well?" 

"Well,  I  think  that  you  could  get  into 


138          MISS  THEODORA 

the  treasurer's  office  of  the  Nashawapag 
Mills.  Richard  Somerset  has  great  in 
fluence  there." 

"Now,  Aunt  Teddy,  you  wouldn't 
want  me  to  be  a  book-keeper  the  rest  of 
my  life, — for  that  is  all  I'd  be ;  and  as  for 
salary,  unless  I  stayed  there  thirty  or 
forty  years,  until  those  at  the  top  died,  I 
suppose  that  I  could  make  a  little  more 
than  a  bare  living,  but  it  wouldn't  be 
much  more." 

Then  Miss  Theodora,  who  could  think 
of  very  few  occupations  outside  of  the 
learned  professions  in  which  a  young 
man  of  good  family  might  properly  en 
gage,  at  last  surrendered  to  Ernest's 
arguments. 

"We  have  so  very  little  money,"  said 
Ernest,  after  he  had  let  her  know  that 
Richard  Somerset  had  told  him  how 
slight  their  resources  were;  "we  are  so 
poor,  that  in  a  few  years  I  know  that  I 
would  have  to  beg  or  borrow,  and  I'm 
sure  you  would  not  wish  me  to  do  one 
any  more  than  the  other." 


MISS  THEODORA          139 

"No,  indeed,"  exclaimed  his  aunt. 

"You  see,"  he  went  on,  "I  am  acquir 
ing  very  extravagant  tastes  at  Cam 
bridge.  There's  no  place  like  it  for 
making  you  want  money,  if  you  once  be 
gin  to  contrast  yourself  with  fellows  who 
have  plenty." 

"But  1  thought  you  were  indepen 
dent,"  sighed  poor  Miss  Theodora. 

"Oh,  I  should  be  if  I  were  really  in 
terested  in  my  work,"  replied  Ernest; 
"but,  you  see,  I  can't  throw  myself  into 
my  studies  as  I  ought  to." 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  Ernest  was 
worse  than  a  little  artful  in  thus  painting 
himself  as  black  as  he  could.  He  did 
not  tell  his  aunt,  what  really  was  the 
truth,  that  it  was  harder  for  him  to  give 
up  Harvard  now  than  it  would  have  been 
six  months  before.  He  had  begun  to 
have  his  own  group  of  special  friends ; 
he  had  begun  to  enjoy  many  phases  of 
college  life.  Despite  certain  distasteful 
studies,  he  might  have  gone  through  col- 


140          MISS  THEODORA 

lege  without  special  discredit.  He  might 
have  taken  his  degree,  as  many  of  his 
classmates  would,  with  considerable  cul 
ture  and  very  little  practical  knowledge 
clinging  to  him.  He  trembled  when  he 
saw  that  he  could  take  so  kindly  to 
dawdling  ways.  But  his  Puritan  con 
science  interposed.  When  he  knew  how 
really  poor  they  were,  his  love  for  his 
aunt  and  his  pride  all  imparted  to  him  a 
firmness  at  which  he  himself  marvelled. 


XVI. 

Miss  Theodora  gave  in,  partly  because 
she  herself  had  begun  to  see  that  she 
might  wrong  Ernest  by  insisting  on  his 
carrying  out  her  ideas.  His  poor  rank 
in  the  classics  showed  a  mind  unlike  that 
of  his  father  or  his  grandfather.  When 
she  saw  his  brow  darken  at  mention  of 
the  work  he  must  do  to  get  off  his  condi 
tion  in  Greek,  she  remembered  how 
cheerful  he  had  once  been  whistling  over 
his  work  in  his  basement  room.  Sh'e 
longed  to  see  him  again  engaged  in  con 
genial  work  or  studies.  Therefore, 
without  vigorous  defence,  the  castle  in 
Spain  which  she  had  founded  on  Ernest's 


142          MISS  THEODORA 

professional  career  fell  under  Ernest's  di 
rect  assault.  But  she  was  disappointed, 
and  although  she  did  not  go  out  of  her 
way  to  look  for  sympathy,  she  accepted 
all  that  Miss  Chatterwits  and  Diantha 
offered  her.  The  former  really  believed 
that  Harvard  was  the  only  institution  in 
the  United  States  in  which  a  young  man 
could  get  the  higher  education. 
'  "I  don't  know,"  she  said,  "as  I  ever 
heard  of  a  great  man — that  is,  a  scholar, 
for  I  don't  forget  some  of  the  Presidents 
— that  hadn't  graduated  at  Harvard. 
Not  but  what  a  man  might  be  great,  I 
suppose,  that  wasn't  what  you  would  call 
a  scholar;  but  I  did  think  that  Ernest 
would  follow  right  after  his  grandfather, 
not  to  speak  of  his  father.  And  all  the 
books  you've  saved  for  him,  too,  Miss 
Theodora ! — it  does  seem  too  bad." 

"Oh,  I  still  expect  Ernest  to  be  a  great 
man,"  said  Miss  Theodora,  a  trifle  dubi 
ously.  "I  am  sure  that  he  has  shown 
considerable  talent  already  for  inventing 
things." 


MISS  THEODORA  143 

"Ye-es,"  was  Miss  Chatterwits'  doubt 
ful  response.  "Ye-es, — but  it  seems  as 
if  most  of  the  things  has  been  invented 
that's  at  all  likely  to  give  a  man  a  great 
reputation, — the  telegraphs  and  steam 
boats  and  steam  engines,  not  to  mention 
sewing  machines,  which  I  must  say  has 
made  a  great  difference  in  my  work." 

"Oh,  well,  sometimes  men  benefit  the 
world  by  inventing  some  little  thing,  or 
making  an  improvement — well,  in  steam 
engines  or  something  of  that  kind." 

"I  dare  say, — I  haven't  any  doubt  but 
Ernest'll  be  smarter  than  any  boy  in  the 
school  where  he's  going.  But  it  always 
did  seem  to  me  that  studies  of  that  kind 
were  well  enough  for  Ben  Bruce — and 
such ;  but  Ernest, — he  seems  to  belong 
out  at  Harvard." 

This  was  unkind — for  Miss  Chatter- 
wits  really  liked  Ben  Bruce  very  much. 
But  lately  she  had  had  one  or  two  rather 
wordy  encounters  with  Mrs.  Bruce  when 
they  had  met  by  chance  at  a  neighbor's 


144          MISS  THEODORA 

house.  The  little  dressmaker  was  fond 
of  "drawing  the  line,"  as  she  said,  and 
relegating  people,  in  conversation,  at 
least,  to  their  proper  places.  Mrs.  Bruce 
had  similar  proclivities ;  but  with  less  ac 
curate  data  on  which  to  base  her  classi 
fication  of  her  neighbors,  she  sometimes 
made  mistakes  on  which  Miss  Chatter- 
wits  was  bound  to  frown. 

"If  I  went  about  sewing  from  house  to 
house,"  said  Mrs.  Bruce,  "I  suppose  I 
might  know  more  about  people  than  I 
do ;  but  being  in  private  life,  it  isn't  to  be 
supposed  I  know  much  but  what  has 
been  handed  down  to  me  in  my  own 
family." 

"Well,  if  you  went  about  sewing  from 
house  to  house,"  said  Miss  Chatterwits, 
"you'd  be  more  use  to  your  family  than 
you  are  now."  With  which  last  word 
Miss  Chatterwits  had  flounced  away,  and 
for  a  time  spoke  somewhat  depreciat 
ingly  of  the  Bruces,  although  in  her 
heart  she  envied  them  their  Revolution 
ary  ancestor. 


MISS  THEODORA          145 

Miss  Theodora  had  no  petty  pride. 
She  liked  Ben;  she  knew  that  he  was  a 
good  friend  for  Ernest,  and  the  one  thing 
that  reconciled  her  to  the  change  in  Er 
nest's  career  was  the  fact  that,  for  a  year 
at  least,  he  would  be  able  to  have  much 
help  and  advice  from  Ben.  After  the 
latter  should  get  his  scientific  degree,  he 
would  probably  leave  Boston;  but  for 
the  present  she  knew  that  his  friendship 
would  mean  much  to  Ernest. 

Ernest  spent  six  weeks  of  the  summer 
after  his  decision  about  college  at  a  quiet 
seashore  village  with  Ben.  Ben  tutored 
Ernest  in  various  branches  in  which  he 
was  deficient,  and  proved  an  even  better 
friend  to  him  than  Miss  Theodora  had 
hoped.  Sometimes,  as  they  sat  in  a  little 
cove  at  the  edge  of  the  water,  letting 
their  books  fall  from  their  hands,  gazing 
at  the  crescent-shaped  Plymouth  shore, 
they  would  talk  of  many  things  outside 
of  their  work.  Ben  was  an  enthusiast 
about  the  early  history  of  New  England. 


146          MISS  THEODORA 

He  loved  to  theorize  over  the  country's 
possibilities,  and  to  trace  its  present 
greatness  from  the  principles  planted  by 
the  Plymouth  and  Massachusetts  Bay 
colonies.  Once  as  they  sat  there  talk 
ing,  Ernest  exclaimed :  "Those  men  were 
workers,  Ben  \  Sometimes  I  think  that 
we  are  all  wrong  today, — we  attach  so 
much  importance  to  books.  Now,  I  be 
lieve  that  I  should  have  been  much  bet 
ter  off  now  and  happier  if  I  could  have 
gone  at  once  to  work  two  or  three  years 
ago,  instead  of  undertaking — " 

But  Ben  interrupted  him.  "Oh,  no! 
you  are  wrong.  You  do  not  realize  your 
privileges.  Perhaps  you  will  be  sur 
prised  to  hear  that  I  envied  you  your 
chance  of  going  to  Harvard.  It  would 
have  been  my  choice  to  go  there  if  I 
could.  But  the  Institute  was  more  prac 
tical,  and  I  dare  say  was  the  best  for  me. 
Only — don't  make  too  little  account  of 
your  advantages,  Ernest." 

What  Ben  said  was  true  enough.    His 


MISS  THEODORA          147 

own  mind  was  essentially  that  of  the 
scholar.  He  could  have  gone  on  forever 
acquiring  knowledge.  He  had  no  desire 
to  put  it  at  once  to  the  practical  use  to 
which  necessity  compelled  him.  Yet, 
understanding  Ernest's  temperament,  he 
had  not  discouraged  him  from  leaving 
college,  and  he  stood  ready  to  help  him 
to  the  utmost  in  his  scientific  work. 

Many  a  time,  however,  with  no  envi 
ous  mind,  he  had  wished  that  it  had  been 
his  to  change  places  with  Ernest.  What 
delightful  hours,  he  thought,  he  could 
have  passed  within  the  gray  walls  of  the 
college  library!  He  would  have  been 
no  more  inclined  than  Ernest,  perhaps, 
to  follow  Miss  Theodora's  plans  for  a 
lawyer's  career.  No;  he  would  have 
aimed  rather  to  be  a  Harvard  professor. 
Had  fortune  favored  him,  he  would 
have  spent  a  long  time  in  post-graduate 
study,  not  only  at  Cambridge,  but  at 
some  foreign  university.  "What  folly  \" 
he  would  then  suddenly  cry ;  "life  is  prac- 


148          MISS  THEODORA 

tical."  But  while  doing  the  duty  that 
lay  nearest,  he  knew  well  enough  that 
Harvard  would  have  meant  infinitely 
more  to  him  than  his  chosen  course. 

During  two  years  only  of  Ernest's 
Technology  course  were  he  and  Ben  to 
gether.  When  the  latter  was  graduated 
he  went  West  at  once  to  begin  his  con 
test  for  the  honors  and  the  wealth  which 
were  to  work  that  wonderful  change  in 
the  affairs  of  his  family.  But  Ernest 
had  started  well,  and  even  without  his 
friend's  guidance  he  kept  on  in  the  path 
he  had  marked  out.  To  give  an  account 
of  the  four  years  of  his  work  would  be  to 
tell  a  rather  monotonous  story.  This 
was  not  because  he  allowed  his  life  to  be 
a  mere  routine — far  from  this.  While 
he  worked  energetically  during  the  win 
ter,  he  managed  to  find  time  for  recrea 
tion.  Society,  so-called,  did  not  interest 
him.  But  he  had  a  group  of  friends,  of 
fixed  purpose  like  his  own,  who  were 
still  sufficiently  boyish  to  enjoy  life. 


MISS  THEODORA          149 

With  them  he  took  long  walks  in  search 
of  geological  specimens,  inviting  them 
home  on  winter  evenings  to  share  Miss 
Theodora's  simple  tea. 

From  some  of  these  Western  friends  of 
Ernest's,  with  a  point  of  view  so  unlike 
her  own,  Miss  Theodora  gained  an  en 
tirely  different  outlook  on  life.  Ernest 
had  impressed  on  her  the  fact  that  the 
West  was  to  be  his  home,  at  least,  until 
he  had  made  a  lot  of  money.  She  be 
gan,  therefore,  to  take  an  interest,  not 
only  in  these  Westerners,  with  their 
broad  pronunciation,  but  in  the  Western 
country  itself.  She  re-read  "The  Ore 
gon  Trail";  she  read  one  or  two  other 
books  of  Western  travel.  She  studied 
the  topography  of  Colorado  and  Neva 
da  in  her  old  atlas,  and  she  always  noted 
in  the  newspapers  chance  scraps  of  infor 
mation  about  that  distant  region. 

Nahant  knew  Ernest  no  more  in  sum 
mer.  His  long  vacation  was  always 
spent  elsewhere  in  practical  field  work. 


ISO          MISS  THEODORA 

He  almost  dropped  out  of  the  lives  of 
those  who  had  known  him  so  well  as  a 
little  boy.  At  the  same  time,  he  had 
enough  social  diversion.  In  the  new  set 
of  which  he  now  formed  one  there  was 
always  more  or  less  going  on.  The  sis 
ters  of  some  of  his  friends  invited  him  to 
their  dances.  He  seemed  so  heartily  to 
enjoy  his  new  popularity  that  Kate  real 
ized,  with  a  certain  pain,  that  he  was 
drawing  away  from  her ;  that  he  was  de 
parting  far  from  that  pleasant  old  West 
End  life.  There  was  an  irony  of  fate  in 
remembering  that  by  using  her  influence 
in  the  direction  of  the  new  work  which 
Ernest  had  undertaken,  she  had  helped 
to  send  him  farther  away. 


XVII. 

When  the  die  was  finally  cast,  Miss 
Theodora  wisely  kept  to  herself  her  dis 
appointment  at  Ernest's  change  of  plan. 
Her  life  thus  far  had  accustomed  her  to 
disappointments.  What  a  pang  she  had 
felt,  for  example,  some  years  after  leav 
ing  it,  when  she  heard  that  the  old  family 
house  on  the  hill  had  become  a  boarding 
house !  How  disturbed  she  had  been, 
walking  up  Beacon  Street  one  day,  to 


152          MISS  THEODORA 

see  workmen  tearing  down  one  of  the 
most  dignified  of  the  old  purple-win 
dowed  houses,  once  the  home  of  inti 
mate  friends  of  hers,  to  make  way  for  an 
uglier  if  more  ornate  structure!  What 
an  intrusion  she  felt  the  car  tracks  to  be 
which  run  through  Charles  Street  across 
Beacon  Street,  connecting  the  South  and 
the  West  Ends  of  the  city !  Miss  Theo 
dora's  Boston  was  not  so  large  but  that 
it  could  be  traversed  by  any  healthy  per 
son  on  foot;  and  she  agreed  with  Miss 
Chatterwits  when  she  exclaimed,  "What 
in  the  world  has  the  West  End  to  do 
with  Roxbury  Neck?" 

Real  trials,  like  Ernest's  change  of 
plan,  Miss  Theodora  was  able  to  bear 
with  surprising  equanimity.  She  had 
not  even  quailed  when  she  made  that  dis 
covery,  hardest  of  all  even  for  a  sensible 
woman,  that  she  was  growing  old.  The 
first  rude  shock  had  come  one  day  in  a 
horse-car,  when  she  heard  an  over 
dressed  young  mother  say  to  her  little 


MISS  THEODORA          153 

son  in  a  loud  whisper :  "Give  the  old  lady 
a  seat."  Before  this  Miss  Theodora  had 
certainly  not  thought  of  herself  as  old; 
but  looking  in  the  glass  on  her  return 
home,  she  saw  that  the  youth  had  van 
ished  from  her  face.  For  though  the 
over-dressed  young  mother  might  have 
said  "oldish"more  truly  than  "old,"  yet 
Miss  Theodora  realized  that  the  change 
had  come. 

What  it  was  she  could  scarcely  define, 
save  that  there  were  now  long  lines  on 
her  cheek  where  once  there  had  been 
curves,  that  her  eyes  were  perhaps  less 
bright,  that  gray  hairs  had  begun  to  ap 
pear,  and  that  certainly  she  had  less  color 
than  formerly.  All  these  changes  had 
not  come  in  a  day,  and  yet  in  a  day,  in 
an  hour,  Miss  Theodora  realized  them. 
As  she  looked  in  the  mirror  and  saw  that 
her  gray  hairs  were  still  few  enough  to 
count,  she  glanced  below  the  glass  to  the 
little  faded  photograph  on  the  table. 
John  had  passed  into  the  land  of  per- 


154          MISS  THEODORA 

petual  youth,  and  William,  that  other, 
had  he  begun  to  show  the  marks  of  age? 
Thus  she  wondered  as  she  gazed  at 
the  young  man  with  the  longish,  thick 
hair,  at  which  Ernest  had  sometimes 
laughed.  But  she  seldom  let  her  mind 
wander  in  this  direction,  and  she  turned 
it  now  toward  other  friends  of  her  girl 
hood,  of  whom  some  occasionally  flitted 
across  her  vision.  The  most  of  those 
who  had  been  her  contemporaries  the 
winter  she  came  out  were  now  married. 
Of  these,  she  could  not  recall  one  who 
had  not  "married  well,"  as  the  phrase  is. 
Were  they  growing  old  more  gracefully 
than  she?  Would  she  change  places 
with  any  one  of  those  portly  matrons, 
absorbed  now  in  family  or  social  inter 
ests?  The  sphere  of  the  unmarried  few 
was  unattractive  to  her.  The  causes, 
whether  literary  or  philanthropic,  into 
which  the  majority  threw  themselves  had 
certainly  no  charm  for  her.  She  could 
not  have  worked  for  the  Indians  after  the 


MISS  THEODORA          155 

manner  of  her  cousin  Sarah  Somerset. 
To  her  the  Indian  race  seemed  too  cruel 
for  the  enthusiasm  lavished  on  it  by  a 
certain  group  of  Boston  women. 

When  her  father  had  verged  toward 
Transcendentalism  she  had  lagged  be 
hind,  and  more  modern  "isms"  were  even 
farther  out  of  her  reach.  She  listened 
dubiously  to  rhapsodies  by  one  of  her 
cousins  on  the  immense  spiritual  value 
of  the  Vedas.  Woman  suffrage !  Well, 
she  had  only  one  friend  who  waxed  elo 
quent  over  this,  and  Miss  Theodora,  al 
though  on  the  whole  liberal-minded,  was 
repelled  from  a  study  of  the  question  by 
the  peculiarities  of  dress  and  manner  af 
fected  by  some  of  its  devotees.  Even 
Culture  itself,  with  a  capital  letter,  and 
all  that  this  implies  could  never  have 
been  a  fad  of  hers.  The  books  people 
talked  about  now  were  so  different  from 
those  that  she  had  been  accustomed  to ; 
she  knew  nothing  about  modern  French 
literature,  and  her  friends  cared  nothing 


156          MISS  THEODORA 

for  Miss  Ferrier  or  Crabbe.  After  all, 
Miss  Theodora  would  not  have  changed 
places  with  one  of  these  friends  of  her 
youth,  married  or  unmarried,  with  their 
tablets  covered  with  social  engagements 
or  note-books  crammed  with  appoint 
ments  for  meetings  or  lectures.  She 
found  her  own  life  sufficiently  full. 

That  she  was  growing  old  brought  her 
little  worry,  coming  as  it  did  at  the  same 
time  with  the  change  in  Ernest's  plans. 
Although  she  would  have  been  very  slow 
to  admit  it,  Kate's  thorough  approval  of 
Ernest's  new  career  modified  Miss  Theo 
dora's  own  view  of  it.  Unconsciously 
she  had  begun  to  dream  of  a  united  for 
tune  for  Kate  and  Ernest ;  for  in  her  eyes 
the  two  were  perfectly  adapted  to  each 
other. 

"There's  a  prospect  of  your  amounting 
to  something  now,"  she  heard  Kate  say 
to  Ernest  one  day.  "You  haven't  been 
at  all  like  yourself  this  winter,  and  I  just 
believe  that  college  would  have  ruined 
you,"  she  continued  frankly. 


MISS  THEODORA  157 

It  was  Kate  who  pointed  out  to  Miss 
Theodora  the  perils  that  surrounded  a 
young  man  who  was  not  very  much  in 
terested  in  his  work  at  Cambridge. 

"Well,  of  course  you  ought  to  know, 
for  you  have  a  brother  in  college." 

"Oh,  dear  me,  Ernest  and  Ralph  aren't 
a  bit  alike.  Ernest  would  always  be  dif 
ferent  from  Ralph,  I  should  hope."  For 
Kate  and  Ralph,  since  their  childhood, 
had  gone  on  very  different  paths. 

"No,  I'm  not  afraid  of  Ernest's  grow 
ing  like  Ralph ;  but  I  know  that  Ernest 
is  more  easily  influenced  than  you  think, 
and  it's  a  good  thing  that  he's  going  to 
have  studies  that  will  interest  him."  All 
of  which  seemed  to  Miss  Theodora  to 
augur  well  for  the  plans  which  she  had 
formed  for  these  two  young  people.  •  j 

To  Ernest  Kate  spoke  even  more 
frankly  than  to  his  aunt.  "I  knew  that 
you'd  do  it,"  she  said,  "and  I  feel  almost 
sure  that  you'll  make  a  great  man,  and 
really  you  will  be  able  to  help  your  aunt 


158          MISS  THEODORA 

much  sooner  than  if  you  began  to  study 
law.  As  soon  as  possible  I  want  Cousin 
Theodora  to  have  lots  of  money.  She 
won't  accept  anything  from  me,  and  you 
have  no  idea  how  many  things  there  are 
that  she  needs  money  for." 

So  Ernest,  encouraged  by  the  good 
opinion  of  the  young  woman  he  cared 
most  for,  made  less  than  he  might  have 
made  of  the  older  woman's  disappoint 
ment.  He  made  less  of  it,  perhaps,  be 
cause,  with  the  confidence  of  youth,  he 
believed  the  time  near  when  she  would 
admit  that  he  had  done  the  very  best 
thing  for  them  both. 


Mrs.  Fetchum  pressed  her  face  close 
to  the  window  pane  to  watch  Miss  Theo 
dora  enter  her  door. 

"It  seems  to  me  Miss  Theodora  ain't 
quite  as  firm  on  her  feet  as  she  used  to 
be.  Don't  you  think  she  stoops  some?" 
she  said  to  her  husband. 

"Miss  Theodora's  getting  along,"  was 
the  answer.  "She's  not  as  young  as  she 
was." 

"She  isn't  older  than  Mrs.  Stuart 
Digby,  but  she's  had  a  sight  more  care. 
Well,  speaking  of  angels,  there  she  is 


160          MISS  THEODORA 

now," — and  the  good  woman's  voice 
trembled  with  excitement  as  Mrs. 
Digby's  victoria  drew  up  before  Miss 
Theodora's  door. 

From  time  to  time  Mrs.  Digby's 
horses  scornfully  pawed  the  pavement  in 
front  of  Miss  Theodora's  house,  while 
the  owner  waited  for  her  cousin  to  get 
ready  for  the  drive.  Miss  Theodora 
never  greatly  enjoyed  these  drives,  for 
a  certain  condescension  in  Mrs.  Digby's 
manner  always  disturbed  her.  She 
knew,  too,  that  she  was  seldom  invited 
unless  the  latter  had  some  object  of  her 
own  to  serve.  On  the  present  occasion 
they  were  hardly  seated  in  the  carriage 
before  the  special  purpose  of  this  drive 
was  revealed. 

"Kate  is  a  great  trial  to  me,  Theodora. 
Would  you  believe,  I  can't  get  her  to 
take  the  least  interest  in  society?  Why, 
I  couldn't  make  her  go  to  the  cotillions 
this  winter.  With  her  bright  manner 
she  would  be  very  popular;  and  it's  too 


MISS  THEODORA  161 

provoking  to  think,  after  all  the  advan 
tages  she's  had,  she  fairly  throws  herself 
away  on  old  ladies  and  colored  children, 
— and  I  do  wish  that  you'd  help  me." 

Miss  Theodora  trembled  as  if  guilty 
herself  of  some  misdeed.  "What  can  I 
do?"  she  asked  faintly,  knowing  well 
enough  that  it  was  she  who  had  interes- 
ed  Kate  in  the  Old  Ladies'  Home  and 
the  colored  children. 

Mrs.  Digby  seemed  to  read  her 
thoughts.  "Of  course,  I  don't  want  her 
to  give  up  her  reading  to  the  old  ladies 
altogether.  But  I  do  wish  you  could 
make  her  realize  her  obligations  to  so 
ciety.  I  can't  myself.  Why,  she  refuses 
all  invitations,  and  hardly  ever  goes  even 
to  her  sewing  circle.  The  next  thing 
she'll  be  taking  vows  at  St.  Margaret's 
or  doing  something  equally  absurd." 

Miss  Theodora,  though  aware  of  the 
hopelessness  of  so  doing,  promised  to 
use  her  influence  with  Kate. 

Mrs.  Digby  herself  was  born  for  so- 


162          MISS  THEODORA 

ciety,  and  it  was  a  trial  even  greater  than 
she  had  represented  to  Miss  Theodora 
that  her  daughter  should  be  so  indiffer 
ent  to  the  great  world. 

"Kate  has  style,"  she  said  to  her  cou 
sin,  "and  manner,  and  if  she  only  would 
exert  herself  to  please  my  friends  to  the 
extent  that  she  exerts  herself  to  please 
nobodies,  I  should  have  little  to  com 
plain  of.  Poor  Stuart's  death  was  very 
unfortunate,  happening  just  the  winter 
Kate  was  ready  to  come  out.  It  put  an 
end,  of  course,  to  all  the  plans  I  had 
made  for  her  among  the  younger  set. 
She  didn't  mind  missing  balls  and  par 
ties  herself,  for  she  never  cared  for  that 
kind  of  thing ;  but  I  do  think,  now  that 
she  is  out  of  mourning,  that  she  might 
take  a  little  interest  in  society,  and  at 
least  accept  some  of  the  dinner  invita 
tions  she  has." 

"But  she  does  go  out  a  good  deal, 
doesn't  she?"  began  Miss  Theodora,  re 
membering  some  of  Kate's  humorous 


MISS  THEODORA  163 

accounts  of  amusing  episodes  connected 
with  various  little  dinner  parties  she  had 
attended. 

"Oh,  yes ;  I  often  insist  on  her  going 
with  me;  and  once  in  a  while  there  is 
some  invitation  she  really  wishes  to  ac 
cept.  But  it  is  the  duty  of  a  girl  of  her 
age  to  be  seen  more  in  society;  and  I 
do  wish  that  she  could  be  made  to  un 
derstand  that  she  owes  something  to  her 
position  and  to  her  family." 

"Well,  I  will  speak  to  her,"  said  Miss 
Theodora,  "but  I  doubt  if  I  can  influ 
ence  her  to  any  great  extent." 

"Indeed  you  can,"  responded  Mrs. 
Digby.  "You  know  how  I  feel,  I  am 
sure.  I  don't  want  Kate  to  be  an  old 
maid,  and  she's  older  now  than  I  was 
when  I  married.  Thus  far,  she  has  not 
had  the  slightest  interest  in  any  young 
man,  although  she  has  plenty  of  admir 
ers.  Perhaps  I  ought  to  be  thankful  for 
this,  for  it  would  be  just  in  line  with  her 
general  perversity  for  her  to  fall  in  love 


1 64          MISS  THEODORA 

with  some  thoroughly  unsuitable  per 
son." 

Possibly  Miss  Theodora,  with  Ernest 
ever  in  mind,  was  unusually  sensitive  in 
detecting  undue  emphasis  in  Mrs. 
Digby's  pronunciation  of  "any"  when 
she  said  that  Kate  had  not  the  "slightest 
interest  in  any  young  man."  Or  per 
haps  Mrs.  Digby,  too,  had  Ernest  in 
mind  when  she  made  this  sweeping 
statement. 

Two  people  could  hardly  be  more  un 
like  than  Kate  and  her  mother.  Mrs. 
Digby  was  of  dark  complexion,  of  com 
manding  figure,  though  not  over  tall, 
and  she  lived  for  society.  Kate  was 
blond,  with  a  half-timid,  though 
straightforward  air,  and  she  was  as  anx 
ious  to  keep  far  from  the  whirl  of  things 
as  her  mother  was  to  be  active  in  her 
little  set.  Mrs.  Digby  had  worn  heavy 
mourning  for  her  husband  the  exact 
length  of  time  demanded  by  strict  pro 
priety.  But  just  as  soon  as  she  could, 


MISS  THEODORA  165 

she  laid  aside  her  veil  and,  indeed,  crepe 
in  every  form,  and  gave  outer  shape  to 
her  grief  by  clothing  herself  in  becoming 
black  relieved  by  abundant  trimmings 
of  dull  jet. 

"I  could  wish  Mrs.  Digby  no  worse 
punishment,"  said  one  of  her  intimate 
enemies,  "than  to  be  condemned  to  at 
tend  a  round  of  dinners  in  a  high-necked 
gown."  From  which  it  might  truly  be 
inferred  that  Mrs.  Digby  herself  was 
thought  to  have  no  mean  opinion  of 
Mrs.  Digby  arrayed  in  conventional  din 
ner  attire.  Yet  her  most  becoming  low- 
necked  gown  Mrs.  Digby  could  have 
given  up  almost  more  readily  than  the 
dinners  which  she  had  to  sacrifice  in  her 
year  of  mourning.  She  had  been  fond 
of  her  husband,  no  one  could  deny  that. 
But,  after  all,  she  missed  him  less  than 
the  outside  world  thought  she  missed 
him.  He  and  she  had  led  decidedly  sep 
arate  lives  for  many  years  before  his 
death,  and,  indeed,  in  the  early  years  the 


166          MISS  THEODORA 

stress  of  feeling  had  been  more  on  his 
side  than  on  hers.  She  was  not  long, 
therefore,  in  returning  to  a  round  of 
gayety,  somewhat  subdued,  to  be  sure, 
but  still  "something  to  take  me  away 
from  myself  and  my  grief,"  she  occa 
sionally  said  half-apologetically  to  those 
who,  like  Miss  Theodora,  she  knew 
must  be  surprised  at  her  return  to  the 
world.  On  this  particular  occasion,  af 
ter  making  her  request  for  Miss  Theo 
dora's  influence  with  Kate,  she  con 
tinued  : 

"If  it  were  not  for  Ralph  I  do  not 
know  what  I  should  do.  He  goes 
everywhere  with  me,  and  is  perfectly  de 
voted  to  society.  Now,  in  his  case,  I 
almost  hope  he  won't  marry.  I  should 
hate  to  give  him  up  to  any  one  else.  But 
he  is  so  fastidious  that  I  know  it  will  be 
some  time  before  he  settles  upon  any 
one, — although  I  must  say  that  he  is  a 
great  favorite. 

This    was    the    early    autumn    after 


MISS  THEODORA  167 

Ralph's  graduation.  He  had  gone 
through  Harvard  very  creditably,  and 
had  even  had  honorable  mention  in  his 
tory  and  modern  languages.  Mrs.  Digby, 
however,  with  all  her  pride  in  her  son, 
felt  that  the  large  income  which  he  drew 
went  for  other  than  legitimate  college 
expenses.  As  a  woman  of  the  world, 
she  said  that  Ralph  could  not  be  so  very 
unlike  the  men  who  were  his  associates, 
and  she  knew  that  certain  rumors  about 
them  and  their  doings  could  not  be 
wholly  false.  Nevertheless,  she  seldom 
reproved  her  son,  and  she  even  took 
pride  in  his  self-possessed  and  ultra- 
worldly  manner.  Surely  that  kind  of 
thing  was  infinitely  better  form  than 
Kate's  self-consciousness  and  Puritan 
frankness. 

Mrs.  Digby  graced  a  victoria  even 
more  truly  than  she  graced  a  low-necked 
gown.  Indeed,  to  the  many  who,  never 
having  had  the  good  fortune  to  see  her 
in  a  drawing-room,  knew  her  only  by 


1 68  MISS  THEODORA 

name  and  sight  as  she  rolled  through  the 
streets,  she  and  the  victoria  seemed  in 
separable,  a  kind  of  modernized  centaur. 
It  was  impossible  for  such  people  to 
think  of  her  in  any  other  attitude  than 
that  of  haughty  semi-erectness  on  the 
ample  cushions  of  her  carriage. 

On  this  particular  day,  as  Mrs.  Digby 
drove  down  Beacon  Street,  and  thence 
by  the  river  over  the  Milldam,  she  met 
many  friends  and  bowed  to  them. 

"Who  in  the  world  has  Mrs.  Digby 
got  with  her  today?"  some  of  them 
would  ask  their  companions,  in  the  easy 
colloquialism  of  every-day  life. 

"I  haven't  the  faintest  idea,  but  she's 
a  rather  out-of-date-looking  old  per 
son,"  was  the  usual  reply,  although  oc 
casionally  some  one  would  identify  Miss 
Theodora,  usually  adding:  "I  knew  her 
when  she  was  a  girl,  but  she's  certainly 
very  much  changed.  Well,  that's  what 
comes  of  living  out  of  the  world." 

These  drives  with  Mrs.  Digby  always 
made  Miss  Theodora  feel  her  own  lone- 


MISS  THEODORA  169 

liness.  In  this  city — this  Boston — 
which  had  always  been  her  own  home 
and  the  home  of  her  family,  she  had  few 
friends.  She  could  hardly  have  known 
fewer  people  if  living  in  a  foreign  city. 
It  was  therefore  with  a  start  of  relief  that 
she  heard  Mrs.  Digby  exclaim : 
"Why,  there's  Ernest,  isn't  it?" 
Miss  Theodora  glanced  ahead.  Near 
sighted  though  she  was,  she  had  no 
trouble  in  recognizing  her  nephew's 
broad  shoulders  and  swinging  gait.  But 
the  young  man  was  not  alone.  He  was 
walking  rather  slowly,  and  bending  tow 
ard  a  girl  in  a  close-fitting  tailor-made 
suit.  It  was  the  end  of  October,  too 
early  for  furs,  yet  the  girl  was  anticipat 
ing  the  winter  fashions.  One  end  of  a 
long  fuzzy  boa  flaunted  itself  over  her 
shoulder,  stirred,  like  the  heavy  ostrich 
plumes  in  her  hat,  by  the  afternoon 
breeze. 

.  "It  isn't  Kate,  is  it?"  said  Miss  Theo 
dora,  dubiously,  as  the  carriage  drew 
near  the  pair. 


170          MISS  THEODORA 

"No,  indeed,  not  Kate,"  quickly  an 
swered  Mrs.  Digby. 

"I  wonder  who  it  can  be,"  continued 
Miss  Theodora,  for  she  could  not  help 
observing  Ernest's  tender  air  toward  the 
girl. 

"Oh,  I'm  sure  I  can't  say,  Theodora. 
It's  certainly  no  one  I  know ;  but  Kate — 
or  perhaps  it  was  Ralph — has  been  say 
ing  something  about  a  flirtation  of  Er 
nest's  with  some  girl  he  met  somewhere 
last  year."  Then  seeing  that  Miss 
Theodora  looked  downcast :  "Oh,  it 
isn't  likely  it's  anything  serious,  Theo 
dora  ;  it's  only  what  you  must  expect  at 
his  age,  and  of  course  his  interests  are 
all  so  different  now  from  what  you  had 
expected,  that  it  isn't  surprising  to  find 
him  flirting  or  falling  in  love  with  girls 
whom  you  and  I  know  nothing  about." 

By  this  time  the  carriage  had  passed 
the  two  young  people,  and  Ernest  was 
so  absorbed  in  his  companion  that  he 
did  not  even  see  it  rolling  by. 


XIX. 

Poor  Miss  Theodora!  One  walk  on 
a  public  thoroughfare  with  a  girl  hereto 
fore  unknown  to  one's  relatives  need  not 
imply  the  surrender  of  a  young  man's 
affections ;  but  Ernest,  so  his  aunt 
thought,  was  not  like  other  young  men. 
He  would  be  sincere  in  a  matter  of  this 
kind.  If  his  interest  in  any  girl  had 
been  so  marked  as  to  be  a  subject  of 
comment  for  Ralph  and  Kate,  it  must 
be  known  to  many  other  people.  Yet 
why  had  Kate  not  spoken  to  her,  as  well 


172          MISS  THEODORA 

as  to  her  mother ;  or  why  had  not  Ernest 
himself  suggested  the  direction  in  which 
his  fancy  was  wandering?  Many  ques 
tions  like  these  crowded  Miss  Theo 
dora's  mind,  for  which  she  had  no  sat 
isfactory  answer.  Strangest  of  all, — and 
she  could  hardly  account  for  her  own 
reticence, — she  said  not  a  word  to  Kate 
nor  to  Ernest  of  all  this  that  lay  so  near 
her  heart.  If  Ben  had  been  at  home,  she 
might  have  talked  freely  to  him.  He 
could  have  told  whether  or  not  Mrs. 
Digby's  surmises  were  correct.  But 
Ben  had  been  in  the  West  for  a  year 
and  a  half.  If  he  had  been  at  home,  she 
thought,  perhaps  this  would  never  have 
happened.  Yet,  after  all,  what  was  the 
"this"  which  so  disturbed  Miss  Theo 
dora's  usually  calm  mind?  What  were 
the  signs  by  which  she  recognized  that 
Ernest  had  secrets  which  he  did  not  con 
fide  to  her? 

The  signs,  though  few,  to  her  were 
positive.      Ernest   had    begun   to   take 


MISS  THEODORA          173 

more  interest  in  society.  While  study 
ing  diligently,  he  also  found  time  for 
more  or  less  gayety.  In  the  left-hand 
corner  of  his  top  bureau  drawer  there 
was-  a  heap  of  dance  programmes  and 
progressive  euchre  tally-cards.  Kate 
had  seen  them  one  day  when  helping 
Miss  Theodora  put  Ernest's  room  in 
order.  She  had  given  a  scornful  "No" 
when  the  former  asked  her  if  she  had 
been  at  a  dance  whose  date  was  indi 
cated  on  a  certain  programme. 

"Of  course,  I  know  you  seldom  go  to 
dances,  but  still  I  thought  perhaps — " 

"Oh,  Cousin  Theodora,  I  haven't 
been  at  a  dance  this  winter;  and  as  to 
these  parties  that  Ernest  has  been  going 
to  —  there  was  a  set  of  them,  wasn't 
there?  I  really  don't  recognize  the 
names  of  any  of  the  managers." 

Now  this  reply  was  not  reassuring  to 
Miss  Theodora,  who  had  a  vague  hope 
that  Kate  and  Ernest  met  occasionally 
in  society.  Then  Kate  continued : 


174          MISS  THEODORA 

"Ernest  is  really  growing  very  giddy. 
Just  look  at  that  heap  of  neckties.  I 
should  say  some  of  them  had  not  been 
worn  twice,  and  then  he  has  flung  them 
down  as  if  he  didn't  intend  to  wear  them 
again." 

Now  in  the  midst  of  her  railing,  Kate 
stopped.  In  the  back  of  the  drawer,  be 
hind  the  neckties,  she  had  caught  sight 
of  a  photograph, — it  was  the  face  of  a 
girl  she  had  seen  before, — and  she 
closed  the  drawer  with  a  snap  that  made 
Miss  Theodora  look  up  quickly  from  her 
task  of  dusting  the  books  on  Ernest's 
study  table.  Just  then  Diantha  passed 
the  door. 

"I've  been  telling  Miss  Theodora,"  she 
cried,  with  the  familiarity  of  an  old  ser 
vant,  "I've  been  telling  Miss  Theodora 
that  I  believe  Mast'  Ernest's  in  love.  He 
don't  spend  much  time  with  us  now,  and 
I  reckon  'tain't  study  that  takes  him  out 
every  evening.  I  shouldn't  wonder  if 
you  knows  more  about  it  than  we  do," — 


MISS  THEODORA          175 

and  Diantha  rolled  her  large  eyes  sig 
nificantly  at  Kate. 

But  Kate  was  silent,  and  Miss  Theo 
dora  was  silent,  and  Diantha,  with  a  toss 
of  the  head  and  arms  akimbo,  passed  on 
to  her  little  attic  room.  Nor  when  she 
was  gone  did  the  two  ladies  speak  to 
each  other  of  the  thing  which  lay  so  near 
their  hearts. 

Now,  Miss  Theodora,  until  driven 
thereto  by  Mrs.  Digby,  had  never  con 
templated  the  possibilty  of  Ernest's  tak 
ing  a  tender  interest  in  any  one  not  ap 
proved  by  her.  She  had  never  resented 
Sarah  Fetchum's  addressing  him  by  his 
first  name,  even  after  he  had  entered  col 
lege  and  Sarah  herself  was  almost 
through  the  Normal  School.  She  could 
invite  Sarah  and  her  intimate  friend,  Es- 
telle  Tibbits,  to  take  tea  with  her  with 
out  any  fear  that  Ernest  would  fall  in 
love  with  either  of  them. 

Unaware,  apparently,  of  his  aunt's  so 
licitude,  Ernest  continued  to  mix  a  little 


176          MISS  THEODORA 

play  with  the  hard  work  of  his  last  year 
of  study.  Miss  Theodora,  at  least,  had 
no  reason  to  complain  of  neglect  from 
him.  He  went  with  her  to  the  Old 
West  Church  on  Sunday  morning  as 
willingly  as  ever  he  had  gone  in  the  days 
of  his  childhood.  Indeed,  as  a  little  boy 
she  had  often  had  to  urge  him  unduly  to 
go  with  her,  and  sometimes  he  would  try 
to  beg  off  with  the  well-worn  plea  that 
he  "hated  sermons."  Later,  as  they  sat 
in  the  high-backed  pew  which  they 
shared  with  the  Somersets,  Miss  Theo 
dora  would  notice  the  boy's  fair  head 
moving  restlessly  from  side  to  side. 

As  years  passed  on  Ernest  grew  as 
fond  as  his  aunt  of  the  old  church,  with 
its  plain  white  ceiling  and  gallery,  sup 
ported  by  simple  columns,  and  its  tab 
lets  in  honor  of  men  of  a  bygone  age. 
If  sometimes  on  Sunday  afternoons  he 
went  to  Trinity  Church,  contented  to 
stand  for  an  hour  in  the  crowded  aisle 
to  hear  the  uplifting  words  of  the  great 


MISS  THEODORA  177 

preacher,  he  never  made  this  later  ser 
vice  an  excuse  for  neglecting  his  aunt's 
church.  In  this,  as  in  almost  all  other 
matters  in  which  she  had  marked  prefer 
ences,  Ernest  gave  Miss  Theodora  little 
ground  for  complaint. 

Toward  the  end  of  his  Technology 
course  Ernest  made  all  his  other  inter 
ests  bend  to  study.  No  longer  had  he 
any  evening  engagements  to  worry  his 
aunt.  He  read  late  into  the  night.  His 
thesis  occupied  most  of  his  day,  for  it 
involved  an  immense  amount  of  practi 
cal  work  in  a  factory  out  of  town.  As 
Miss  Theodora  observed  his  zeal,  as  she 
heard  reports  of  his  good  standing  in  his 
class,  she  could  but  contrast  this  state  of 
affairs  with  his  unsatisfactory  year  at 
Harvard. 


XX. 

"Isn't  it  perfectly  splendid?"  cried 
Kate,  who,  in  spite  of  a  general  precision 
of  speech,  was  not  above  using  an  occa 
sional  superlative.  Miss  Theodora  had 
been  less  than  human  had  she  contra 
dicted  her  young  cousin,  whose  words 


MISS  THEODORA          179 

referred  to  Ernest's  thesis.  For,  al 
though  it  bristled  with  scientific  terms 
which  they  understood  hardly  as  well  as 
the  majority  of  his  auditors,  Miss  Theo 
dora  and  Kate  listened  eagerly  to  every 
word.  "Of  course,  you're  proud  of 
him ;  now  .you  can't  say  you're  not ;" — 
and  the  young  girl  gave  her  cousin's 
hand  a  squeeze  which  the  elder  woman 
returned  with  interest.  That  his  rela 
tives  were  not  partial  was  proved  by  the 
newspapers  the  next  morning,  for  they 
made  especial  mention  of  Ernest,  and 
said  that  he  seemed  likely  to  add  new 
honors  to  the  distinguished  name  he 
bore.  Though  Miss  Theodora  would 
have  preferred  to  see  Ernest  in  flowing 
gown  on  the  Sanders  Theatre  platform, 
with  the  Governor  and  his  staff  and  dis 
tinguished  professors  and  noted  alumni 
in  the  background,  she  did  not  express 
her  regrets  to  Kate.  A  Harvard  Com 
mencement  is  unlike  any  other,  and 
Kate,  who  realized  this  as  strongly  al- 


i8o          MISS  THEODORA 

most  as  Miss  Theodora  did,  whispered, 
"Please  don't  think  you're  sorry  that  it 
isn't  a  Harvard  A.  B." 

How  could  any  one  who  loved  him  be 
otherwise  than  happy  to  see  Ernest  in  so 
cheerful  a  mood,  smiling  at  his  aunt  and 
Kate,  bowing  to  Miss  Chatterwits,  who 
had  a  good  seat  near  the  front?  If  only 
he  had  not  rushed  up  in  one  of  the  inter 
missions  to  speak  to  that  piquant-look 
ing  girl  in  the  large  white  hat,  whom 
Kate  from  a  distance  regarded  with  an 
air  of  interest  mixed  with  disdain. 

After  the  excitement  of  this  last  day, 
Ernest,  contrary  to  his  usual  habit,  was 
moody  and  restless.  Miss  Theodora 
watched  him  narrowly.  She  had  hoped 
when  the  pressure  of  work  was  removed 
that  he  would  settle  down  into  calm 
ways,  and  put  off  as  long  as  possible  the 
inevitable  decision  about  his  future  ca 
reer.  Must  he,  she  wondered,  must  he 
really  go  to  that  great  indefinite  West, 
which  years  before  had  seemed  the 


MISS  THEODORA  181 

grave  of  a  large  share  of  her  happiness?" 

Ernest  himself  soon  put  an  end  to  her 
wondering. 

"Come,  Aunt  Teddy,"  he  said  one 
morning,  drawing  her  beside  him  on  the 
massive  sofa  that  faced  the  bookcase, 
with  its  rows  of  neglected  law  books ; 
"let  us  talk  over  my  future.  How  soon 
can  I  go?  I  am  lounging  about  here 
too  long." 

"Go?"  she  queried.  "Go  where?"— 
though  in  her  heart  she  knew  very  well. 

"Now  don't  equivocate;  it  isn't  nat 
ural  for  you,  Aunt  Theodora;  you  are 
generally  so  straightforward.  Don't 
you  remember  that  I  told  you  that  I 
might  have  a  good  offer  to  go  to  Colo 
rado?  Well,  it  has  come." 

Whereupon  Ernest  proceeded  to  read 
a  letter  offering  him  a  definite  position 
and  a  stated  salary  with  a  certain  mining 
company,  and  the  letter  was  signed 
"William  Easton." 

"Isn't  it  fine  to  have  such  a  chance?" 


1 82          MISS  THEODORA 

said  the  young  man,  looking  up,  and 
noting  a  surprising  change  in  his  aunt's 
face.  She  had  grown  extremely  pale, 
and  he  saw  that  she  was  trembling. 

"William  Easton,"  she  said,  without 
answering  his  question ;  "how  strange !" 

Then  there  flashed  across  Ernest's 
mind  his  cousin  Richard's  warning 
against  mentioning  Mr.  Easton  to  his 
aunt.  Of  course,  the  time  for  silence  on 
this  point  had  now  passed, — and  he  con 
tinued  : 

"Yes;  perhaps  I  may  not  have  men 
tioned  Mr.  Easton's  name  before ;  but  I 
didn't  know  that  you  would  recall  it. 
You've  heard  me  speak  of  him,  of 
course,  the  president  of  the  Wampum 
and  Etna,  whom  I  met  on  the  Altruria. 
He's  as  good  as  his  word,  and  though  I 
haven't  heard  from  him  for  two  years, 
here's  this  letter  offering  me  the  very 
chance  he  said  he  would  give  me — all  on 
account  of  my  father,  I  suppose.  They 
must  have  been  greater  friends  than  I 


MISS  THEODORA          183 

thought," — looking  questioningly  tow 
ard  Miss  Theodora. 

"Yes,  they  were  great  friends,"  an 
swered  she,  "and  I  knew  him  very  well 
too,  but  I  would  almost  rather  not  have 
you  accept  his  offer." 

"Just  because  I  shall  have  to  go  so 
far  away,  I  suppose.  Now,  what  else 
would  you  have  me  do?" 

"Surely  there  are  other  chances  in 
Boston.  You  can  find  something  to  do 
here." 

"If  I  could,  I  wouldn't,"  replied  the 
young  man.  "Now,  what  would  be  the 
sense  in  staying  here?  Of  course,  I 
could  get  something  to  do,  there's  no 
doubt  of  that ;  but  it  would  be  wicked  to 
refuse  an  offer  like  this." 

"Why  not  begin  here  and  gradually 
work  up?  We  don't  need  so  very  much 
money,  Ernest  — 

"Oh,  Aunt  Teddy,  I  do.  What  would 
you  say  if  I  told  you  I  thought  of  getting 
married?" 


1 84          MISS  THEODORA 

"You — you — get  married!"  and  Miss 
Theodora  actually  blushed.  Then  rec 
ollecting  herself,  "I  am  delighted,"  she 
said.  "Kate  is  a  dear  girl.  Not  a  bit 
like  her  mother." 

"Kate!  It  isn't  Kate,"  stammered 
the  young  man;  and  Miss  Theodora, 
with  a  sudden  revulsion  of  feeling,  re 
called  many  things  that  she  had  almost 
forgotten.  Much  that  she  had  not  un 
derstood  was  now  explained.  There 
was  somebody,  after  all,  whom  Ernest 
cared  for — and  it  wasn't  Kate. 

"Who  is  the  young  lady?"  she  asked 
with  some  dignity. 

"Why,  Eugenie.  Haven't  you  heard 
me  speak  of  Eugenie  Kurtz?" 

Miss  Theodora  shook  her  head. 

"Of  course,"  he  said,  "it  isn't  an  en 
gagement,  or  I  would  have  told  you  all 
about  it  or  asked  your  advice,  but  it's  all 
so  uncertain.  Her  father  — " 

"Who  is  her  father?"  asked  Miss 
Theodora.  "The  name  sounds  famil 
iar." 


MISS  THEODORA          185 

"Of  course — you've  seen  it  on  his 
wagons,  and  I  daresay  you've  been  in 
his  shop,  too.  He's  really  the  chief  man 
in  the  firm,  for,  although  his  partner's 
name  stands  first,  Mr.  Kurtz  has  really 
bought  Brown  out,  all  but  a  small 
share." 

Then  Miss  Theodora  remembered  one 
of  the  best  known  retail  shops  in  the 
city,  whose  growth  from  small  begin 
nings  was  often  quoted  as  a  striking  ex 
ample  of  American  energy.  She  re 
membered,  too,  that  one  partner — per 
haps  both — had  been  referred  to  as  of 
humble  origin.  This  remembrance  came 
to  her  in  a  flash,  and  she  took  up  Er 
nest's  last  words : 

"Her  father  — " 

"Yes,  her  father,"  repeated  the  young 
man,  "won't  consent  to  an  engagement 
at  present.  I've  got  to  show  what  I  can 
do  in  the  world,  and  so  I  must  go  West, 
where  I  can  have  room  enough  to  move 
around."  And  then  Ernest  digressed 


186          MISS  THEODORA 

into  praise  of  Eugenie,  her  charms  of 
person  and  manner,  her  taste  in  dress, 
her  ability  in  housekeeping,  in  which  she 
had  had  much  experience  since  her 
mother's  death.  "You  will  call  on  her, 
won't  you?"  he  pleaded. 

But  Miss  Theodora  would  say  neither 
yes  nor  no,  as  he  named  the  street  where 
Eugenie  lived.  She  knew  this  street 
very  well.  She  had  passed  through  it 
several  times  in  the  evenings  with  Er 
nest.  She  had  never  liked  it,  this  long, 
new  street,  with  its  blocks  of  handsome 
bay-windowed  houses.  How  seldom 
were  the  curtains  in  these  bay-windows 
drawn  close !  She  could  not  think  well 
of  people  who  left  their  rooms  thus  im 
modestly  exposed  to  the  gaze  of  passers- 
by.  Brought  up  as  she  had  been  to  re 
gard  lamp-light  as  a  signal  for  the  clos 
ing  of  blinds  and  curtains,  she  always 
turned  her  head  away  from  the  windows 
revealing  beyond  the  daintily  shaded 
lamp  a  glimpse  of  rooms  furnished  much 


MISS  THEODORA          187 

more  gorgeously  than  any  to  which  she 
was  accustomed.  These  unshaded  win 
dows  had  always  seemed  to  her  typical 
of  the  lives,  of  the  minds,  of  the  dwellers 
in  the  bay-windowed  houses — no  retire 
ment,  no  privacy,  all  show. 

To  think  that  Ernest's  interests 
should  have  begun  to  mingle  with  those 
of  people  whom  she  could  never,  never 
care  to  know!  Miss  Theodora  sighed. 
Perhaps  it  was  the  best  thing  after  all 
for  Ernest  to  go  West.  Absence  might 
make  him  forget  Eugenie.  "At  his 
age,"  thought  Miss  Theodora,  "it  is 
ridiculous  for  him  to  imagine  himself  in 
love." 

Yet  Ernest,  though  Miss  Theodora 
knew  it  not,  had  been  deeply  in  love 
more  than  once  before.  There  was  that 
beautiful  creature  with  the  reddish- 
brown  hair — several  years  older  than  he, 
to  be  sure — whom  he  had  met  on  his 
passage  back  from  Europe.  What  a  joy 
it  had  been  to  walk  the  deck  with  her, 


i88          MISS  THEODORA 

while  she  confided  all  her  past  and  pres 
ent  sorrows  to  him !  He  did  not  tell  her 
his  feelings  then  —  she  might  have 
laughed  at  him.  Later,  how  his  heart 
had  palpitated  as  he  crossed  the  little 
square,  past  the  diminutive  statues  of 
Columbus  and  Aristides,  to  call  on  her 
at  the  home  of  the  sisterhood  where  she 
thought  of  taking  vows !  How  well  she 
looked  in  the  severe  garb  of  the  order! 
so  saintly,  indeed,  did  she  appear  as  she 
swept  into  the  bare  room,  that  he  made 
only  a  short  call,  recrossing  the  square 
more  in  love  than  ever,  though  in  a  som 
bre  mood. 

A  few  months  after,  when  he  heard  of 
the  would-be  devotee's  marriage  to  old 
Abram  Tinker,  that  crabbed  millionaire, 
he  was  surprised  to  find  himself  so  little 
disturbed.  His  happy  disposition  gave 
cynicism  no  place  even  for  a  foothold, 
and  soon  he  barely  remembered  this  lit 
tle  episode  irr  his  life.  Eugenie,  indeed, 
seemed  to  him  the  only  woman  he  had 


MISS  THEODORA  189 

ever  cared  for.  He  longed  to  talk  about 
her  to  Kate,  but  something  prevented 
his  opening  his  heart  to  the  latter.  Nor 
was  his  aunt  ready  to  listen  to  him.  He 
was  amazed  to  find  her  so  unsympa 
thetic.  Her  opposition  to  his  going  to 
the  West  had,  however,  disappeared. 
She  even  hastened  his  preparations,  and 
bade  him  good-bye  at  the  last  with  un 
expected  cheerfulness. 


XXI. 

Ernest,  travelling  West,  had  plenty  of 
time  to  wonder  if,  after  all,  the  present 
satisfied  him.  His  answer  on  the  whole 
was  "yes."  He  had  little  to  regret  in  the 
past;  he  was  hopeful,  he  was  positive 
about  the  future.  A  classmate  travelled 
with  him  as  far  as  Chicago,  and  this  part 
of  the  journey,  broken  by  a  few  hours' 
stay  at  Niagara,  seemed  short  enough. 
Chicago  itself,  with  its  general  air  of 


MISS  THEODORA          191 

business  bustle  and  activity,  opened  a 
new  world  to  him.  At  the  head  office 
of  the  Wampum  and  Etna,  where  letters 
awaited  him  from  Mr.  Easton,  he  found 
himself  at  once  a  man  of  consequence — 
no  longer  the  student,  little  more  than 
schoolboy,  that  he  had  been  so  lately  in 
the  eyes  of  most  persons.  Here  the 
clerks  in  the  office  bowed  deferentially; 
the  agent  consulted  him;  evidently  Mr. 
Easton  intended  to  give  him  much  re 
sponsibility. 

In  his  day  or  two  in  the  great  city  he 
drove  or  walked  in  the  parks,  through 
the  boulevards,  and  along  the  lake  front. 
He  grasped,  as  well  as  he  could  in  so 
short  a  time,  the  city's  vastness,  meas 
ured  not  alone  by  extent  of  territory,  by 
height  of  buildings,  but  by  resources, 
the  amount  of  which  he  gathered  from 
the  fragments  of  talk  that  came  to  him 
in  his  hurried  interviews  with  various 
business  men.  Boston,  looked  at  with 
their  eyes,  through  the  large  end  of  the 


192          MISS  THEODORA 

telescope,  was  almost  lost  in  a  dwindling 
perspective.  The  West  End, — how 
trivial  all  its  interests !  Miss  Theodora, 
Kate,  Miss  Chatterwits,  Diantha, — well, 
these  loomed  up  a  little  larger  than  the 
city  itself;  and  Eugenie — ah!  she  filled 
the  field  of  the  telescope,  until  Ernest 
could  see  little  else. 

After  he  had  crossed  the  fertile  fields 
of  Illinois,  and  had  watched  the  green 
farms  of  Nebraska  fade  away  into  the 
dull  brown,  uncultivated  plains,  he  grew 
lonely,  realizing  how  far  he  was  from  all 
that  was  dearest  to  him.  Would  not 
Miss  Theodora's  heart  have  ached  with 
a  pain  deeper  than  that  caused  by  this 
separation,  could  she  have  known  that 
all  her  years  of  devotion  were  obscured 
by  the  glamor  of  that  one  bright  year  in 
which  Ernest  had  felt  sure  of  Eugenie's 
love. 

As  he  looked  from  the  car  window 
across  the  wide  stretch  of  open  country, 
where  the  only  objects  between  his  eye 


MISS  THEODORA  193 

and  the  distant  horizon  were  a  canvas- 
covered  wagon  or  a  solitary  horseman, 
Ernest  had  more  than  enough  time  for 
reflection.  Would  Eugenie  be  true  to 
him?  Of  course;  surely  that  was  not  a 
doubt  tugging  at  his  heart-strings. 
Would  her  father  be  more  reasonable? 
His  brow  darkened  a  little  as  he  thought 
of  his  last  interview  with  Mr.  Kurtz. 

"No,"  the  latter  had  said  decidedly; 
"it  is  not  worth  while  to  talk  of  an  en 
gagement.  Time  enough  for  that  when 
you  have  shown  what  you  can  do.  As  I 
understand  it,  you  have  no  special  pros 
pects  at  present.  At  least,  it's  to  be 
proved  whether  you'll  succeed  in  the 
West.  I've  known  a  good  many  people 
to  fail  out  there.  I  can't  have  Eugenie 
bound  by  an  indefinite  engagement. 
I've  worked  hard  for  her,  and  she's  used 
to  everything.  What  could  you  give 
her?  If  Eugenie  married  tomorrow, 
she'd  want  just  as  much  as  she  has  to 
day.  She  isn't  the  kind  of  a  girl  to  live 


194          MISS  THEODORA 

on  nothing  but  love.  I've  talked  with 
her,  and  know  how  she  feels." 

This  last  sentence  had  made  Ernest 
shiver,  and  now,  as  it  recurred  to  him, 
he  again  wondered  if,  after  all,  Eugenie 
was  less  in  earnest  than  he. 

He  recalled  the  dignity  with  which 
Mr.  Kurtz  had  drawn  himself  up  as  he 
said: 

"Besides,  I'm  not  going  to  have  Eu 
genie  go  into  a  family  likely  to  look 
down  on  her."  Then,  paying  no  atten 
tion  to  Ernest's  protests,  "Oh,  yes,  I 
know  what  I'm  talking  about.  I 
haven't  done  business  in  Boston  for 
nothing  these  forty  years  without  know 
ing  what  they  call  the  difference  be 
tween  people.  It  isn't  much  more  than 
skin  deep,  but  they  feel  it,  all  your  peo 
ple.  I'm  a  self-made  man,  and  I'm  not 
ashamed  of  it.  I  don't  ask  any  favors  of 
any  one,  and  I  don't  want  any — and  I'm 
not  anxious  to  have  my  daughter  go 
among  people  who  will  look  down  on 
her." 


MISS  THEODORA  195 

"But  my  people  are  so  few,"  poor  Er 
nest  had  said.  "My  aunt  — " 

"Oh,  your  aunt — yes — people  respect 
her,  and  she's  very  good  to  the  poor ;  but 
she  was  born  in  Boston,  and  she  don't 
believe  in  marrying  out  of  her  set  any 
more  than  if  she  was  a  Hindoo — unless 
she's  made  different  from  most  Boston 
men  and  women.  I  know  that  I'm 
made  of  the  same  flesh  and  blood  as  the 
rest  of  them.  But  then  I  wasn't  born  in 
Boston,  and  perhaps  my  eyesight  is 
clearer  on  that  account.  At  any  rate, 
I'm  going  to  do  my  duty  by  Eugenie." 

Then  Ernest,  reflecting  on  this  con 
versation,  from  which  he  had  gleaned  so 
little  comfort,  fell  asleep,  and  when  he 
awoke  in  the  morning  they  were  not  so 
very  far  from  Denver.  Far,  far  ahead, 
across  the  great  plateau,  an  irregular 
dark  line  showed  clear  against  the  morn 
ing  sky.  "The  Rockies,"  some  one 
cried,  and  then  he  felt  half  like  crying, 
half  like  turning  back.  His  new  life  had 


196          MISS  THEODORA 

almost  begun,  and  he  was  hardly  ready 
for  it. 

Could  Ernest  have  known  Mr. 
Kurtz's  true  state  of  mind,  he  would 
have  had  less  reason  for  downhearted- 
ness.  Eugenie's  father  saw  in  the 
young  man  more  promise  than  he  cared 
to  express.  He  liked  Ernest's  frank 
ness  in  speaking  of  his  prospects;  and 
he  knew  that  he  was  no  fortune  hunter. 

By  her  friends  Eugenie  was  called  the 
most  "stylish"  girl  of  her  set.  Always 
sure  to  be  the  leader's  partner  at  the  nu 
merous  Germans  which  were  then  so  in 
vogue,  she  was  certainly  popular.  With 
no  wish  ungratified  by  her  father,  she 
might  have  been  more  selfish  than  she 
was.  It  is  true  that  she  always  had  her 
own  way,  but  then,  as  she  said,  when  her 
father  complained  of  this,  "My  own  way 
is  just  as  apt  to  benefit  other  people  as 
myself."  Without  planning  any  benefi 
cences,  she  did  many  little  kindnesses  to 
her  friends.  She  had  to  have  a  compan- 


MISS  THEODORA          197 

ion  when  she  went  to  Europe,  and  so, 
although  a  chaperone  had  been  already 
provided,  Mr.  Kurtz  cheerfully  paid  the 
expenses  of  a  girl  friend  of  hers,  who 
otherwise  would  have  been  unable  to 
go ;  and  many  other  similar  things  add 
ed  to  her  popularity. 

After  a  year  at  a  finishing  school  in 
New  York,  she  had  returned  home,  to 
find  out  that  popularity  in  a  small  set  is 
not  everything.  Some  persons  said  that 
a  desire  to  climb  had  led  her  to  single 
out  Ernest  for  especial  favor.  His 
name  would  be  an  open  sesame  to  a 
great  many  Boston  doors. 

The  little  circles  of  rich,  self-made 
men,  self-satisfied  women  in  which  she 
moved  did  not  touch  that  one  in  which 
she  knew  Ernest  rightfully  belonged. 
When,  innocently  enough,  Ernest  would 
speak  of  some  invitation  he  had  re 
ceived,  or  would  mention  familiarly  some 
one  whose  name  for  her  had  a  kind  of 
sacredness,  all  this  was  like  a  drop  from 
Tantalus'  cup  for  poor  Eugenie. 


198          MISS  THEODORA 

But  Ernest,  measuring  himself  by  his 
lack  rather  than  by  his  possessions, 
never  associated  worldliness  with  Eu 
genie.  He  was  captivated  by  her  beauty, 
by  her  vivacity,  by  her  brilliancy  in 
repartee — Miss  Theodora  would  have 
called  the  last  "pertness."  She  spoke  to 
him  of  his  aunt,  whom  she  knew  by 
sight,  wished  that  she  might  know  her, 
and  asked  more  about  Kate  Digby,  who, 
Ernest  said,  was  just  like  a  sister  to  him. 

"I  should  like  to  meet  her,"  said  Eu 
genie;  and  Ernest,  before  he  left  the 
city,  had  asked  Kate  to  call  on  her. 

A  curious  expression,  which  he  could 
not  quite  read,  came  over  Kate's  face  as 
she  replied,  "Really,  I  don't  believe  I 
can,  Ernest ;  I  haven't  time  enough  now 
to  call  on  half  the  girls  I  know.  There 
are  a  dozen  sewing  circle  calls  that  I've 
owed  for  a  year,  and  it  wouldn't  be 
worth  while  to  begin  with  any  new  peo- 
pie." 

Nor,  with  all  his  attempts  at  persua- 


MISS  THEODORA          199 

sion,  could  Ernest  get  Miss  Theodora 
to  take  the  least  interest  in  Eugenie. 

"You  know  what  I  think  about  the 
whole  matter,"  she  said.  "I  won't  dwell 
on  my  disappointment,  but  it  will  be 
time  enough  for  me  to  know  her  when 
you  are  really  engaged." 

What  wonder  that  Ernest,  nearing 
Denver,  felt  disheartened,  oppressed  by 
his  aunt's  opposition,  and  the  indefinite- 
ness  of  his  relations  with  Eugenie. 


XXII. 

Miss  Theodora  watered  the  morning- 
glories  in  the  little  yard  behind  the 
house  with  sighs,  if  not  with  tears.  It 
was  a  poor  little  garden,  this  spot  of 
greenery  in  the  desert  of  back  yards  on 
which  her  windows  looked.  The  flow 
ers  which  she  cultivated  were  neither 
many  nor  rare.  Nasturtiums,  sweet 
peas  and  morning-glories  were  dexter 
ously  trained  to  hide  the  ugliness  of  the 
bare  brown  fence.  She  had  a  number 
of  hardy  geraniums  and  a  few  low-grow 
ing  things  between  the  geraniums  and 


MISS  THEODORA          201 

the  border  of  mignonette  which  edged 
the  long,  narrow  garden  bed.  In  one 
corner  of  the  yard  there  was  the  dead 
trunk  of  a  pear  tree,  whose  crookedness 
Miss  Theodora  had  tried  to  hide  by  try 
ing  to  make  a  quick-growing  vine  climb 
over  it.  Curiously  enough,  all  these  at 
tempts  had  been  unsuccessful,  and  Er 
nest,  commenting  thereon,  had  said, 
laughingly : 

"Why,  yes,  Aunt  Theodora,  that 
stump  is  so  ugly  that  not  even  the  kit 
ten  will  climb  over  it." 

Neverthless,  there  had  been  a  time 
when  the  tree  was  full  of  leaves,  and 
Miss  Theodora,  glancing  at  it  now,  a 
month  after  her  nephew's  departure, 
sighed,  as  she  recalled  how  Ernest  and 
Kate  had  loved  to  sit  in  its  shade. 
Sometimes  they  had  played  shop  there, 
when  Ernest  was  always  the  clerk  and 
Kate  the  buyer ;  but  more  often  they  had 
sat  quietly  on  warm  spring  afternoons, 
while  Ernest  read  and  Kate  cut  out 


202          MISS  THEODORA 

paper  dolls  from  the  fashion  plates  of  an 
old  magazine.  Indeed,  there  were  few 
things  in  the  house  or  out  of  it  that  did 
not  remind  Miss  Theodora  of  these  two 
young  people.  How  could  she  bear  it, 
then,  that  their  paths  were  to  lie  entirely 
apart? 

Did  Kate  feel  aggrieved  at  Ernest's 
attachment  to  "that  girl,"  as  Miss  Theo 
dora  always  characterized  Eugenie? 
She  wondered  if  she  herself  had  been  too 
stern  in  her  attitude  toward  Ernest's 
love  affair.  She  had  not  been  severe 
with  Ernest, — she  deserved  credit  for 
that,  she  said  to  herself, — yet  she  re 
called  with  a  pang  his  expression  of  dis 
may  when  she  had  said,  "Really,  Ernest, 
you  cannot  expect  me  to  call  on  Miss — 
Miss  Kurtz;  at  least,  not  at  present." 

She  had  excused  herself  by  reflecting 
that  he  was  not  old  enough  to  decide  in 
a  matter  of  this  kind.  It  was  very  dif 
ferent  from  letting  him  choose  his  own 
profession, — though  she  was  beginning 


MISS  THEODORA          203 

to  think  that  even  in  this  matter  she  had 
made  a  mistake.  If  he  had  stayed  at 
Cambridge  he  might  never  have  met 
Eugenie  Kurtz. 

She  had  yielded  to  Ernest  in  the  for 
mer  case  largely  from  a  belief,  founded 
on  many  years'  observation,  that  half 
the  unhappiness  of  middle  life  comes 
from  the  wrong  choice  of  a  career.  She 
had  seen  men  of  the  student  tempera 
ment  ground  down  to  business,  and  re 
gretting  the  early  days  when  they  might 
have  started  on  a  different  path.  She 
had  noticed  lawyers  and  clergymen  who 
were  better  fitted  to  sell  goods  over  a 
counter,  and  she  had  begun  to  think  that 
medicine  was  the  only  profession  which 
put  the  right  man  in  the  right  place. 
This  had  influenced  her  in  letting  Ernest 
choose  his  own  career. 

But  now,  surely  the  time  had  come 
for  her  to  be  firm.  Marriage — other 
mistakes  might  be  rectified,  but  you 
could  never  undo  the  mischief  caused  by 


204          MISS  THEODORA 

an  ill-considered  marriage.  Oh,  how 
happy  she  mgiht  have  been,  if  only  Er 
nest  and  Kate  were  to  be  married.  Well, 
it  was  not  too  late  yet,  and  it  seemed 
more  than  probable  that  her  own  stern 
attitude  might  help  to  bring  about  the 
desired  result — a  breaking  off  of  his  at 
tachment  to  "that  girl." 

The  more  she  thought  about  Ernest 
and  Kate  the  more  confused  grew  poor 
Miss  Theodora.  She  trained  up  some 
wandering  tendrils  of  morning-glory, 
and  with  relief  heard  Diantha  saying,  re 
spectfully  : 

"Mr.  Somerset's  in  the  house,  ma'am. 
He's  been  waiting  some  time." 

She  set  her  watering-pot  down  hastily 
on  the  ground  beside  her.  Here  was 
some  one  whose  advice  she  could  safely 
ask.  She  had  not  seen  Richard  Somer 
set  since  Ernest  went  away  in  June, — 
not,  indeed,  since  he  had  made  the  im 
portant  announcement. 

"I  think  myself,"  said  her  cousin,  af- 


MISS  THEODORA          205 

ter  they  had  talked  for  some  time  about 
Ernest's  professional  prospects,  and  had 
begun  to  touch  on  the  other  matter,  "I 
think  myself  that  you  make  a  mistake  in 
not  calling  on  the  girl — no  matter  how 
the  affair  turns  out.  It  would  please 
Ernest,  and  it  couldn't  do  much  harm. 
I've  come  to  think  that  the  more  you  fall 
in  with  a  young  man's  ideas  at  such  a 
time,  the  more  likely  he  is  to  come 
around  in  the  end  to  your  way  of  think 
ing.  For  all  Ernest  is  so  gentle,  he's 
pretty  determined — just  like  John.  You 
know  he  never  could  be  made  to  give  up 
a  thing  when  once  he'd  set  his  mind 
on  it." 

"Yes,  I  know,"  responded  Miss  Theo 
dora  mildly. 

"Well/  '  continued  her  cousin,  "I'm 
not  sure  but  that  you  are  making  a  mis 
take  in  this  case.  Now,  really,  I  don't 
believe  that  the  girl  or  her  people  are 
half  bad.  It's  surprising  occasionally  to 
find  some  of  these  people  one  don't 


206          MISS  THEODORA 

know  not  so  very  different  from  those 
we  have  been  brought  up  with.  I  re 
member  when  I  was  on  one  of  those 
committees  for  saving  the  Old  South,  a 
man  on  the  committee  who  lived  up 
there  at  the  South  End  invited  us  to 
meet  at  his  house.  Now,  he  gave  us  a 
supper  that  couldn't  have  been  sur 
passed  anywhere.  The  silver  and  china 
were  of  the  best,  and  everything  in  the 
house  was  in  perfectly  good  form, — fine 
library,  good  pictures,  and  all, — and 
positively  the  most  of  us  had  never 
heard  of  the  fellow  until  we  met  him  on 
that  committee.  Well,  I  dare  say  it's  a 
good  deal  the  same  way  with  this 
Kurtz." 

Almost  unconsciously  Miss  Theodora 
raised  her  hand  in  deprecation. 

"Yes,"  he  went  on,  "naturally  you 
don't  want  to  think  about  it  at  present ; 
but  he's  made  a  lot  of  money,  and  the 
East  India  trade  that  set  up  some  of  our 
grandfathers  wasn't  so  very  different 


MISS  THEODORA          207 

from  his  business.  Besides,  Mr.  Kurtz 
has  some  standing.  I  see  he's  treasurer 
for  the  Home  for  Elderly  and  Indigent 
Invalids, — and  that  means  something. 
Think  it  over,  Theodora,  and  don't  let 
any  girl  come  between  you  and  Ernest." 
Much  more  to  the  same  purpose  said 
Richard  Somerset,  thereby  astonishing 
his  cousin.  To  her  he  had  always 
seemed  conservatism  embodied.  But 
he  had  not  lived  in  the  midst  of  a  rapidly 
growing  city  without  feeling  the  pulse  of 
the  time.  While  his  own  life  was  not 
likely  to  be  affected  by  the  new  ideas 
which  he  had  begun  to  absorb,  he  was 
not  afraid  to  give  occasional  expression 
to  them.  Richard  Somerset  was  several 
years  older  than  Miss  Theodora.  In 
early  life  he  had  had  the  prospect  of  in 
heriting  great  wealth.  With  no  desire 
for  a  profession,  he  let  his  taste  turn  in 
the  direction  of  literary  work.  He  had 
large  intentions,  which  he  was  in  no 
haste  to  carrv  out.  With  letters  to  seV- 


208          MISS  THEODORA 

eral  eminent  men  in  England,  France 
and  Germany,  he,  as  soon  as  he  was 
graduated,  started  on  a  European  tour. 
He  studied  in  a  desultory  way  at  one  or 
two  great  universities,  enjoyed  foreign 
social  life  of  the  quiet  and  professional 
kind,  and  acquired  colloquial  ease  in 
two  or  three  modern  languages.  Then 
his  tour,  which  had  lasted  nearly  three 
years,  was  cut  short  by  his  father's 
death.  For  several  years  afterward, 
with  large  business  interests  to  look  af 
ter,  he  had  scant  time  for  literary  work. 
He  managed,  however,  to  bring  out  one 
historical  monograph — a  study  of  cer 
tain  phases  of  Puritan  life  in  the  Massa 
chusetts  Bay  Colony.  Thereafter,  no 
other  book  came  from  his  pen,  though 
he  contributed  occasional  brief  articles 
to  a  well-known  historical  magazine, 
and  over  the  signature  of  "Idem"  sent 
many  communications  of  local  interest 
to  a  certain  evening  paper  of  exclusive 
circulation. 


MISS  THEODORA          209 

Finally  Richard  Somerset  found  him 
self  so  immersed  in  business  that  he 
ceased  even  to  aspire  to  literary  renown. 
But  he  continued  to  read  voraciously, 
and  at  length,  when  the  great  fire  swept 
away  the  two  large  buildings  which  he 
and  his  sister  owned,  he  was  less  dis 
turbed  than  he  ought  to  have  been. 

His  sister,  however,  took  this  loss  to 
heart.  She  had  married  when  not  very 
young  a  man  with  no  money,  and  had 
found  herself  not  so  very  long  after 
wards  a  widow  with  two  daughters  to 
educate  according  to  the  station — as  she 
said — in  which  Providence  had  placed 
them. 

To  make  up,  to  an  extent  at  least,  for 
her  loss,  her  brother  surrendered  a  good 
share  of  the  income  remaining  to  him. 
He  did  this  with  a  secret  satisfaction  not 
entirely  due  to  the  fact  that  he  was  help 
ing  his  sister.  He  felt  that  he  was  pay 
ing  a  kind  of  premium  for  the  freedom 
from  care  which  the  burning  up  of  his 


210          MISS  THEODORA 

property  had  brought  him.  He  paid 
the  premium  cheerfully,  betook  himself 
to  a  sunny  room  in  a  house  not  far  from 
the  Athenaeum,  and  thereafter  devoted 
himself  to  his  books.  His  day  was  reg 
ularly  divided ;  a  certain  amount  of  time 
to  eating,  sleeping,  exercise,  and  to  so 
ciety,  including  the  Club,  for  he  was  no 
hater  of  his  fellow  men  and  women — and 
a  certain  amount  of  time  to  the  Athe 
naeum.  At  first  he  had  intended  to  re 
sume  his  historical  research.  But  the 
periodical  room  of  the  Athenaeum  at 
length  claimed  the  most  of  his  time.  He 
read  English  newspapers,  French  re 
views  and  American  magazines,  and  this 
in  itself  was  an  occupation.  Yet  some 
times  as  he  sat  near  one  of  the  windowed 
alcoves,  and  looked  out  over  the  old 
graveyard,  his  conscience  smote  him. 

When  he  saw  the  sunshine  filtering 
through  the  overhanging  boughs  of  the 
old  trees  upon  the  gray  gravestones,  his 
thoughts  were  often  carried  back  to  that 


MISS  THEODORA          211 

historic  past,  in  which  he  had  once  had 
so  much  interest.  Then,  as  he  glanced 
past  the  pyramidal  Franklin  monument, 
noting  the  busy  rush  of  life  in  the  great 
thoroughfare  on  the  other  side  of  the 
high  iron  fence,  he  would  ponder  a  little 
over  the  contrasts  between  the  Boston 
of  today  and  the  Boston  of  the  past. 
His  reflections  if  put  on  paper  would 
have  been  valuable. 

As  it  was,  he  did  no  more  than  give 
occasional  expression  to  his  views  when 
among  his  intimate  friends.  He  real 
ized,  nevertheless,  that  from  them  he  re 
ceived  but  scant  sympathy.  Like  most 
persons  with  original  ideas,  he  was 
thought  to  be  just  a  little  peculiar. 

"Queer,  you  know;  never  sees  things 
just  as  we  do ;  but  still  awfully  sensible," 
some  of  the  club  men  would  say,  without 
observing  the  contradiction  implied  in 
this  speech. 

Yet  in  spite  of  an  occasional  criticism 
of  this  kind  Richard  Somerset  was  ad- 


212          MISS  THEODORA 

mittedly  a  popular  man,  constantly  con 
sulted  in  matters  where  real  judgment 
was  the  chief  requisite.  In  emergen 
cies,  when  special  committees  were 
formed  to  attend  to  things  philanthropic 
or  literary,  he  was  always  the  first  man 
thought  of  as  a  suitable  member. 

Miss  Theodora  often  wondered  what 
she  should  have  done  without  him;  but 
reflecting  long  over  this  his  latest  advice 
about  her  attitude  toward  Eugenie,  she 
felt  not  wholly  satisfied. 


XXIII. 

Ben  was  again  in  Boston.  A  position 
on  the  staff  of  a  great  railroad  had  been 
offered  him,  and  Boston  for  some  time 
would  be  his  headquarters.  He  was  not 
sorry  to  be  at  home.  His  mother  and 
father  seemed  to  him  to  be  growing  less 
capable.  His  sisters  needed  him,  and 
his  salary  was  large  enough  to  enable 


214          MISS  THEODORA 

him  to  do  for  them  the  many  little  things 
that  add  so  much  to  young  girls'  pleas 
ure. 

To  Miss  Theodora  his  return  was  al 
most  as  great  a  boon  as  to  his  own  fam 
ily.  At  least  once  a  day  he  called  to  see 
what  he  could  do  for  her,  and  usually  he 
went  within  the  house  to  have  a  little 
chat  with  her.  It  was  not  strange  that 
they  talked  chiefly  of  Ernest.  Ben's  na 
ture  was  strongly  sympathetic,  and  he 
knew  what  subject  lay  nearest  Miss 
Theodora's  heart.  Yet  he  disturbed  her 
by  telling  her  plainly  that  he  really 
thought  that  she  ought  to  take  some 
notice  of  Eugenie. 

"But  they're  not  engaged,"  apolo 
gized  Miss  Theodora,  who  discerned  in 
Ben  a  feeling  that  she  was  unjust  to 
Ernest. 

"I  know  they're  not,"  he  replied ;  "but 
it's  much  the  same  thing  as  if  they  were. 
Ernest  won't  change,  and  her  father  will 
soon  give  his  consent." 


MISS  THEODORA          215 

Yet  Miss  Theodora  could  not  get  her 
self  into  a  relenting  mood,  though  Ben, 
like  Richard  Somerset,  added  to  her 
confusion. 

Sometimes  when  Ben  called  at  Miss 
Theodora's  he  found  Kate  there.  In 
her  presence  little  was  said  about  Er 
nest,  and  nothing  about  Eugenie. 

He  had  thought  himself  almost  dis 
loyal  to  Kate  when  he  had  asked  Miss 
Theodora  to  recognize  Eugenie.  His 
only  defence  was  his  friendship  for  Er 
nest,  and  he  was  pleased  enough  that 
Ernest  had  never  sought  his  advice  in 
this  love  affair  of  his.  How  could  he 
have  counselled  Ernest  to  be  more  ap 
preciative  of  Kate  without  disclosing 
his  view  of  her  feelings,  and  how  could 
he  have  encouraged  Ernest  in  his  love 
for  Eugenie  without  being  disloyal  to 
Kate? 

But  what  was  Ernest  made  of,  he 
queried,  to  pass  Kate  by  for  a  girl  like 
Eugenie,  well  enough  in  her  way,  per- 


216          MISS  THEODORA 

haps,  but  oh !  so  different  from  Kate? 
Then,  as  he  glanced  at  the  latter,  he 
could  but  wonder  if  certain  changes 
which  he  noticed  in  her — a  quietness  of 
expression,  an  unwonted  slowness  of  re 
sponse,  so  unlike  her  former  habit  of 
repartee — were  induced  by  regret  at  this 
new  turn  in  Ernest's  affairs.  It  was  a 
matter  about  which  he  himself  could  say 
nothing.  His  own  feeling  for  her  was 
now  too  strong.  He  wondered  if  any 
one  would  even  suspect  how  much  he 
had  cared  for  Kate.  Kate  of  course 
must  never  know.  He  would  not  run 
the  risk  of  destroying  their  friendship  by 
rash  expressions  of  a  regard  warmer 
than  she  had  dreamed  of.  Surely  he 
was  not  presumptuous  in  believing  that 
Kate  valued  this  friendship.  Certainly 
there  was  no  one  else  to  whom  he  could 
open  his  own  heart  as  freely  as  to  her; 
and  he  flattered  himself  that  she  confid 
ed  not  a  little  in  him.  This  autumn  she 
had  come  to  town  in  advance  of  her 


MISS  THEODORA          217 

mother,  and  was  spending  a  month  with 
Miss  Theodora.  He  saw  her  often, 
therefore,  sometimes  when  he  called  at 
Miss  Theodora's,  sometimes  in  one  of 
the  neighboring  side  streets,  on  her  way, 
as  he  usually  thought,  to  visit  some  of 
her  colored  beneficiaries. 

Ben  knew  that  Kate,  since  she  had 
come  of  age,  had  spent  no  small  share  of 
her  income  in  furthering  schemes  for  the 
improvement  of  various  poor  people. 
Some  of  these  schemes  he  fully  ap 
proved  ;  others  seemed  to  him  of  doubt 
ful  value.  Yet  his  disapproval,  though 
he  might  not  have  admitted  it  to  himself, 
was  based  on  no  firmer  ground  than  his 
wish  that  Kate,  as  far  as  possible,  should 
be  spared  the  sight  and  knowledge  of 
disagreeable  things. 

Meeting  her  one  day,  "It  seems  to  me 
that  you  are  always  running  away  from 
Miss  Theodora's/'  he  had  said  in  a  tone 
of  mock  reproof. 

"Oh,  well,   only  when   I   go  to  my 


218          MISS  THEODORA 

cooking  class.  You  see,  it's  such  fasci 
nating  work,  and  the  new  teacher 
doesn't  get  on  with  those  children  half 
as  well  as  I  do.  She's  a  good  teacher, 
but  it's  the  human  nature,  the  black 
human  nature,  that  she  does  not  exactly 
understand.  When  things  are  running 
smoothly  I  don't  expect  to  see  her  more 
than  once  or  twice  a  week." 

"Once  or  twice  a  week,"  echoed  Ben, 
about  twice  as  often  as  you  ought  to  in 
hale  the  odors  of  Phillips  Street." 

"Oh,  nonsense,  you  should  see  our 
room,  as  clean  and  bright  as  fresh  paint 
and  paper  can  make  it,  with  its  perfectly 
ideal  arrangements  in  the  shape  of  stove 
and  dishes." 

Ben  smiled,  though  not  exactly  in  ap 
proval.  Yet  more  and  more  he  realized 
her  power  in  the  neighborhood. 

"See  that  new  machine,"  said  Miss 
Chatterwits,  when  he  called  on  her  one 
day,  and  she  pointed  proudly  to  a  new 
combination  of  polished  wood  and  shin- 


MISS  THEODORA          219 

ing  metal.  "Well,  Kate  bought  me 
that.  She  gives  me  a  good  deal  of  fine 
sewing  to  do,  and  thought  this  machine 
would  be  handier  than  my  old  one, 
which  I'd  had — well,  I  won't  say  how 
long,  but  almost  ever  since  they  were 
first  made.  It  had  grown  kind  of  rick 
ety,  and  hadn't  any  modern  improve 
ments." 

"This  one  looks  as  if  it  could  do  al 
most  everything,"  said  Ben,  glancing  at 
it  a  second  time. 

"Well,  I  do  get  a  sight  of  comfort 
with  it.  Kate,  or  p'r'aps  I  ought  to  say 
Miss  Digby,  allows  me  so  much  a  week, 
and  expects  to  have  all  my  time.  She 
lias  me  do  white  stitching  for  her, — 
which  I  always  do  by  hand, — and  make 
garments  of  various  kinds  for  her  poor 
people,  which  I  do  on  the  machine." 
Miss  Chatterwits  said  "poor  people"  in 
a  very  dignified  tone.  She  was  never 
quite  sure  that  she  enjoyed  sewing  for 
these  dependents. 


220          MISS  THEODORA 

"You  must  be  kept  pretty  busy,  then," 
responded  Ben. 

"Well,  not  so  busy  as  I  might  be,"  she 
answered.  "Some  weeks  there's  very 
little  for  me  to  do.  But  I  get  my  money 
just  the  same,"  she  added  quickly.  "To 
tell  you  the  truth,  I  guess  Kate  wanted 
to  keep  me  out  of  the  Old  Ladies' 
Home,  where  I  certainly  should  be  liv 
ing  this  very  minute  if  she  hadn't 
planned  things  out  for  me.  Of  course 
you  wouldn't  mention  this  to  any  one 
else ;" — and  she  looked  at  Ben  earnestly, 
for  she  suddenly  remembered  that  the 
outside  world  did  not  know  of  this  little 
arrangement. 

"Of  course  I  won't  mention  it,"  said 
the  young  man ;  "but  it's  just  like  Kate, 
isn't  it?" 

"Yes,  it  is ;  you  see,  she  found  out  just 
how  I  was  situated  after  my  sisters  died. 
There  wasn't  a  cent  of  our  savings  left, 
and  people  began  to  get  so  dressy  that 
they  thought  they  had  to  have  their 


MISS  THEODORA          221 

things  made  out  of  the  house,  or  employ 
young  women.  Not  that  I  couldn't 
have  done  as  well  as  anybody,  with  the 
help  of  paper  patterns,  but  people  didn't 
think  so,  and  I  was  at  my  wits'  end. 
What  to  do  I  didn't  know  — " 

"There  was  Miss  Theodora,"  began 
Ben. 

"Yes,  she  was  ready  enough,  and  she 
kept  me  along  with  the  little  work  she 
had.  But  Kate  herself  kind  of  inter 
fered  with  that.  She  said  Miss  Theo 
dora  had  worn  old  clothes  long  enough, 
and  she  some  way  persuaded  her  to  get 
that  dress  for  Ernest's  graduating  ex 
ercises  made  down  town.  Well,  it 
seems  a  pity,  when  Miss  Theodora's  got 
almost  a  whole  trunk  of  things  to  be  cut 
over,  that  she  shouldn't  use  them  up. 
However,  just  when  I  was  at  my  wits' 
end,  Kate  came  along,  and  says  she : 
'How  much  ought  you  to  earn  every 
week  to  live  comfortably?  I'll  add  a. 
third  to  that  if  you'll  save  all  your  time 


222          MISS  THEODORA 

for  me;  I  see  that  I'll  have  to  have  lots 
of  sewing  done  the  next  year  or  two ;' — 
and  though  I  knew  it  was  me  she  was 
thinking  of  more  than  herself,  I  was 
glad  enough  to  say  'yes'  to  her  offer." 

After  this  Miss  Chatterwits  wondered 
how  she  had  happened  to  open  her  heart 
so  to  Ben.  A  third  person  would  have 
accounted  for  it  by  the  fact  that  Ben  and 
Miss  Chatterwits  were  both  deeply  inter 
ested  in  the  same  object. 


XXIV. 

Henceforth,  after  his  conversation 
with  Miss  Chatterwits,  Ben  was  more  at 
tentive  to  her  than  he  had  ever  been  be 
fore.  When  he  met  her  he  always  ac 
companied  her  to  the  door,  and  if  she  had 
been  at  the  grocer's  or  the  baker's,  he 
insisted  on  carrying  her  parcels. 

"I  used  to  think  it  was  very  shiftless 
to  buy  bakers'  bread,"  she  said  one  day, 
apologizing  for  the  large  loaf  which  Ben 
had  transferred  under  his  own  arm. 
"But  it  ain't  shiftless  when  you're  only 


224          MISS  THEODORA 

one.  It  wouldn't  pay  me  to  have  a  reg 
ular  baking.  The  bread  would  get  stale 
before  I  could  eat  it  all," — to  which  Ben 
assented. 

"Ben  always  was  a  good  boy,"  she 
confided  to  a  neighbor,  "which  it  isn't  to 
be  wondered  at  .when  you  remember 
who  his  great-grandfather  was.  It  isn't 
every  young  man,  especially  with  as 
good  a  position  as  he's  got,  would  walk 
up  the  street  with  an  old  woman  like 
me."  She  appreciated  his  kindness  the 
more  because  the  rising  generation  of 
the  neighborhood  paid  very  little  atten 
tion  to  her.  They  beheld  only  a  little 
old  woman,  somewhat  bent  in  the  back, 
with  sparse,  gray  curls,  queer  clothes, 
and  an  affected  walk,  instead  of  the  dig 
nified  person,  as  she  pictured  herself  to 
be,  whose  acquaintance  with  better  days 
gave  her  an  elegance  of  aspect  which  the 
boys  ought  at  least  to  respect. 

Ben,  therefore,  realizing  that  the  lit 
tle  woman  was  always  glad  to  see  him, 


MISS  THEODORA          225 

made  her  frequent,  if  brief,  calls.  Some 
times  he  carried  her  a  book,  or  some 
fruit,  or  at  least  a  breath  of  news  from 
the  outside  world — which  she  liked  to 
hear  about,  even  while  professing  to  de 
spise  it.  Perhaps  Ben  was  not  alto 
gether  single-minded  in  this  matter — 
who  of  us  is  absolutely  single-minded 
about  anything?  Perhaps  he  visited 
Miss  Chatterwits  as  much  to  hear  her 
talk  about  Kate  as  to  give  pleasure  to 
the  old  lady  herself. 

Perhaps  Miss  Chatterwits,  reading  his 
mind  better  than  he  did  himself,  often 
talked  purposely  of  the  subject  that  lay 
so  very  near  his  heart.  It  was  certainly 
no  accident  when  she  turned  nervously 
to  Ben  one  day  with  the  words : 

"There's  something  I  feel's  if  I  ought 
to  tell  you;" — and  the  young  man  rose 
from  the  little  wooden  rocker  in  which 
he  had  vainly  tried  to  look  comfortable, 
saying  cheerfully : 

"Is  there?    Well,  do  tell  me." 


226          MISS  THEODORA 

Then  Miss  Chatterwits  bridled  a  little, 
and  blushed,  and  said :  "Well,  of  course, 
there's  some  people  that  think  an  old 
maid  hasn't  any  real  knowledge  of  mat 
ters  relating  to  the  affections" — she  did 
not  exactly  like  to  come  out  broadly 
with  "love  affairs" — "but,  so  far  as  I'm 
concerned  myself,  I  know  pretty  well 
what's  going  on  around  me  and  how 
people  feel  about  most  things — though  I 
don't  always  tell  what  I  know." 

Then  Ben  felt  himself  growing  a  little 
uncomfortable,  while  the  blood  rushed 
to  his  face.  It  was  leap  year,  but  surely 
Miss  Chatterwits  was  not  going  to  wax 
sentimental  toward  him.  She  did  not 
leave  him  long  in  doubt. 

"As  I  tell  Kate,"  she  continued,  "peo 
ple  don't  always  know  the  exact  state  of 
their  own  feelings.  She  thinks  she'll  be 
an  old  maid,  but  she's  making  a  mistake 
if  she  thinks  she'd  be  happier, — not  that 
I  haven't  got  along  well  enough  myself. 
But  Kate  isn't  calculated  to  live  alone. 


MISS  THEODORA          227 

Someway  she  and  her  mother  ain't  very 
congenial,  and  I  guess  Ralph's  rather 
domineering.  I  know  he's  tried  to  stop 
some  of  her  cooking  classes — and — " 

Here  Miss  Chatterwits  stopped — and 
then  began  to  talk  again. 

"Ben,  you  know  that  photograph  that 
you  and  Ernest  had  taken  in  a  group — 
Ernest  on  his  bicycle,  and  you  standing 
alongside?" 

"Oh,  a  little  tintype." 

"Yes,  so  it  was.  I  guess  it's  six  or 
seven  years  since  it  was  taken." 

"Yes,  it  must  be." 

"Well,  one  day  I'd  been  fitting  on 
something  for  Kate,  and  she  left  her 
watch  behind.  There  was  a  little  locket 
hanging  to  the  end  of  it,  and  I  went  to 
pick  the  watch  up ;  it  caught  on  the  han 
dle  of  a  drawer,  and  as  I  pulled  it  it  ac 
cidentally  jerked  open,  and  there,  inside 
that  locket,  was  that  picture." 

"Oh,  my  dear  Miss  Chatterwits,  it  was 
too  large  to  go  inside  any  locket." 


228          MISS  THEODORA 

"Oh,  I  don't  mean  the  whole  picture, 
but  the  head — your  head — it  had  been 
cut  clear  off.  There  was  your  head  in 
Kate's  locket." 

Ben  looked  annoyed.  He  felt  that 
something  had  been  told  him  which  he 
had  no  right  to  hear.  He  did  not  know 
what  to  say. 

"I'm  losing  my  own  head,"  he  mur 
mured;  but  to  Miss  Chatterwits — put 
ting  on  a  bold  face — he  said :  "Oh,  you 
must  have  seen  Ernest's  picture;  you 
know  we  look  alike;" — and  he  laughed, 
for  no  two  faces  could  be  more  unlike. 

But  Miss  Chatterwits  shook  her  head. 
"Oh,  no;  I'm  not  blind.  There's  many 
other  things  I  could  tell  you,  too ;  but  I 
speak  for  your  own  good,  for  I'm  most 
as  fond  of  you  as  I  am  of  Kate." 

With  these  mysterious  words,  she 
opened  the  door  for  Ben,  who  seemed  in 
haste  to  go,  to  ponder  perhaps  what  she 
had  said,  or  to  put  it  out  of  his  mind, — 
which,  Miss  Chatterwits  wondered  as  he 
left  her. 


MISS  THEODORA          229 

In  suggesting  to  Ben  what  she  be 
lieved  to  be  Kate's  feeling  toward  him, 
Miss  Chatterwits  was  governed  by  vari 
ous  motives.  Chief,  probably,  was  her 
belief  that  her  interference  was  really  for 
Kate's  good.  "I  wish  that  somebody 
had  ever  interfered  for  me,"  she  said  to 
herself,  thinking  of  the  one  young  man 
who  had  ever  interested  her,  who  she 
really  believed  had  been  prevented  only 
by  bashfulness  from  reciprocating  her 
feelings.  "I  believe  it's  the  duty  of 
older  people  to  try  to  bring  things 
about,"  she  thought.  "At  any  rate,  I 
don't  believe  Kate  could  be  offended  at 
what  I  said.  I  know  when  people  are 
just  fitted  for  each  other.  Miss  Theo 
dora  don't  understand  about  those 
things.  She's  all  wrong  about  it's  being 
Ernest  and  Kate.  She  isn't  observing. 
Mrs.  Stuart  Digby  would  a  sight  rather 
it  had  been  Ernest  than  Ben,  little  as  she 
cared  for  Ernest;  and  I'd  be  glad 
enough  to  help  on  things,  just  for  the 


230          MISS  THEODORA 

sake  of  bothering  Mrs.  Digby.  She 
never  looks  my  way  when  she  meets  me, 
and  I  did  hear  that  she  told  Kate  she 
wished  she  wouldn't  come  to  see  me  so 
much.  Well,  it's  easier  to  look  behind 
you  than  ahead,  and  I'll  not  say  another 
word  to  Ben  or  Kate,  but  I'll  wait  and 
see." 

Ben  tried  to  attach  no  importance  to 
what  Miss  Chatterwits  had  said. 

"Suppose  Kate  does  wear  my  picture 
in  her  locket — we're  very  old  friends, 
and  that  does  not  signify  anything." 

The  next  day  he  chanced  to  meet 
Kate  at  the  crowded  Winter  Street 
crossing,  after  she  had  been  shopping. 
Even  as  he  piloted  her  across  the  street, 
threading  his  way  under  the  very  feet  of 
the  car  and  carriage  horses,  his  eye  fell 
on  the  old-fashioned  locket  dangling 
from  her  fob. 

"Whose  picture  have  you  in  that 
locket?  Whose  picture  have  you  in 
that  locket?"  echoed  itself  in  a  danger- 


MISS  THEODORA          231 

ous  refrain  in  his  mind,  until  he  feared 
that  he  should  utter  the  words  aloud. 

It  was  a  clear,  crisp  afternoon;  the 
few  autumn  leaves  that  had  fallen 
cracked  under  their  feet;  the  afternoon 
sun  shone  on  the  State  House  dome  un 
til  it  looked  itself  like  a  second  sun. 

"Did  you  ever  know  so  delightful  a 
day?"  said  Kate. 

"Never,"  said  Ben  positively.  They 
took  the  longest  way  home,  skirting  the 
edge  of  the  Frog  Pond ;  and  then — what 
would  Mrs.  Digby  have  said? — they  sat 
down  on  a  settee. 

Except  for  some  small  boys  on  the 
opposite  shore  sailing  a  refractory  toy 
boat,  they  were  almost  alone,  though  in 
the  very  heart  of  the  city.  Kate  gazed 
abstractedly  at  the  clear  reflection  of  the 
tall  trees  in  the  mirror  before  them. 
She  dared  not  look  at  Ben,  for  she  felt 
his  eyes  upon  her,  and  this  knowledge 
made  her  heart  beat  uncomfortably. 

She  fingered  nervously  the  little  pack- 


232          MISS  THEODORA 

age  that  she  had  brought  from  down 
town,  and  tried  to  think  of  something  to 
say  to  break  the  spell.  Ben  saw  that 
she  avoided  his  eyes,  and  after  waiting 
vainly  for  a  glance  from  her,  he  could 
bear  the  strain  no  longer.  Speak  he 
must,  and  would.  For  what  reason 
could  Kate  have  for  treasuring  that  me 
mento  of  himself,  if  it  were  not  that? — 

"Kate,"  he  cried,  leaning  toward  her, 
while  the  refrain  in  his  brain  found  vent 
at  last  in  words,  "whose  picture  have 
you  in  that  locket?" 

Kate  started  violently,  grasping  the 
locket,  as  if  detected  in  some  crime. 

"Why  do  you  ask?"  she  said,  facing 
him  resolutely,  her  cheeks  crimson,  her 
eyes  bright.  But  her  voice  trembled, 
and  Ben,  with  a  lover's  perception,  tak 
ing  courage  from  these  signs,  laid  his 
hand  gently  on  hers  and  drew  the  tell 
tale  locket  from  her  unresisting  grasp. 

"Shall  I  open  it,  Kate?"  he  said  slow 
ly.  "Remember,  it  will  be  my  answer." 


MISS  THEODORA          233 

She  looked  into  his  eyes  at  last,  and — 
well — what  the  answer  was  he  read  there 
you  or  I  need  not  inquire.  It  is  enough 
to  know  that  half  an  hour  later  Ben  and 
Kate  walked  homeward,  apparently  un 
conscious  of  everything  but  each  other's 
existence.  They  even  passed  by  one  or 
two.  acquaitances  without  bowing,  al 
though  without  great  effort  they  really 
could  have  seen  them  perfectly  well. 

When  they  reached  Miss  Theodora's 
door  they  stood  for  a  minute  looking 
down  the  hill. 

"How  blue  the  water  is!"  said  Kate, 
gazing  at  the  river,  "and  what  an  ex 
quisite  tint  in  the  sky!  Did  you  ever 
see  anything  so  lovely?" 

"Yes,  I  see  something  far  lovelier 
now,"  said  Ben,  regarding  Kate  herself 
intently.  Her  face  seemed  to  reflect  the 
ruddy  tint  she  admired. 

"I  meant  the  sunset,"  she  said  firmly. 

"I  should  call  it  sunrise,"  smiled  Ben, 
— and  thus  they  entered  the  house. 


XXV. 

Poor  Miss  Theodora!  She  could 
never  have  imagined  herself  so  indiffer 
ent  to  anything  that  concerned  Kate  as 
she  was  at  first  to  the  news  of  her  en 
gagement.  But  at  length,  after  she  had 
several  times  seen  Kate  and  Ben  to 
gether,  she  wondered  that  she  had  not 
long  before  realized  their  fitness  for  each 
other.  Perhaps,  after  all,  she  had  made 
a  mistake  in  believing  that  Kate  and 
Ernest  could  have  been  happy  together. 
Certainly,  she  had  been  very  blind  in  her 
estimate  of  Kate's  feelings. 


MISS  THEODORA          235 

She  never  knew,  for  pride  forbade  the 
young  girl  to  dwell  on  the  rather  painful 
subject,  how  difficult  it  was  for  Kate  and 
Ben  to  gain  Mrs.  Digby's  consent  to 
their  engagement.  It  could  hardly  be 
said,  indeed,  that  she  gave  her  consent. 
She  simply  submitted  to  the  inevitable. 
Kate  was  of  age,  and  had  her  own 
money,  an  independence,  if  not  a  for 
tune  ;  and  Mrs.  Digby,  after  using  every 
argument,  decided  to  make  the  best  of 
what  she  could  not  help.  Ralph,  at 
least,  would  commit  no  social  folly  like 
this  of  his  sister's — Ralph,  that  model  of 
discretion  and  mirror  of  good  form.  She 
did  not  even,  as  Miss  Theodora  had 
dreaded,  reprove  her  cousin  for  allowing 
this  love  affair  to  develop  unchecked  by 
her.  Whatever  she  may  have  thought 
of  Miss  Theodora's  blindness,  she  decid 
ed  to  make  Kate's  engagement  a  family 
affair — an  affair  of  her  own  small  family, 
in  which,  apparently,  she  intended  not 
to  include  her  cousin. 


236          MISS  THEODORA 

Then  Miss  Theodora,  feeling  her 
heart  soften  as  she  watched  Kate  and 
Ben,  wondered  if  she  had  not  been  too 
hard  with  Ernest.  Ought  she  not  to 
show  some  interest  in  Eugenie?  Though 
this  query  never  shaped  itself  in  words 
spoken  to  Kate  or  any  one  else,  it 
pressed  itself  upon  her  constantly.  A 
sentence  from  Ernest's  last  letter  haunt 
ed  her :  "I  cannot  be  perfectly  happy  un 
til  I  know  that  you  and  Eugenie  have 
met.  She  has  not  written  to  me  for 
some  time,  and  I  am  almost  sure  this  is 
because  she  is  so  much  hurt  at  the  cold 
ness  of  my  relatives.  I  did  expect  some 
thing  different  from  you  and  Kate." 

This  letter  touched  Miss  Theodora 
more  than  a  little ;  but  Kate  made  no  re 
sponse  when  her  cousin  read  it  to  her. 
Though  she  could  not  tell  exactly  why, 
Kate's  silence  annoyed  her.  She  even 
began  to  wonder  what  she  should  wear 
when  she  made  the  first  call,  and  she  re 
called  all  Ernest  had  said  about  Eu- 


MISS  THEODORA          237 

genie's  critical  taste  in  dress.  She  was 
glad  that  Kate  had  insisted  on  her  hav 
ing  an  autumn  street  gown  made  at  a 
fairly  fashionable  dressmaker's. 

Miss  Chatterwits  happened  to  be  sew 
ing  at  Miss  Theodora's  on  the  day  when 
the  latter  made  her  decision  about  Eu 
genie. 

In  spite  of  the  new  dressmaker,  Miss 
Theodora  still  had  some  work  for  the 
old  seamstress.  Her  method  of  work 
ing  always  afforded  Kate  great  amuse 
ment. 

For,  as  she  talked,  the  points  of  a 
dozen  pins  projected  from  between  her 
teeth,  where  she  held  them  for  conven 
ience.  She  still  wore  close  to  her  side 
the  self-same  little  brown  velvet  cushion, 
or  it  looked  like  the  same  one,  which 
had  always  astonished  Ernest  by  its  ca 
pacity.  Though  it  was  hardly  an  inch 
thick,  Miss  Chatterwits  had  a  habit  of 
running  into  its  smooth  surface  long 
darning  needles  and  shawl  pins,  as  well 


238          MISS  THEODORA 

as  fine  needles  and  pins.  What  became 
of  them  was  always  a  matter  of  deep 
conjecture  to  Ernest,  for  they  were 
sometimes  embedded  until  neither  head 
nor  eyes  could  be  seen.  It  seemed  as  if 
they  must  have  pierced  Miss  Chatter- 
wits'  bony  waist.  Could  she  possibly  be 
so  thin  as  not  to  have  any  flesh  to  feel 
the  pricks?  Bones,  of  course,  have  no 
feeling,  used  to  think  Ernest,  watching 
with  a  kind  of  fascination  each  motion 
of  Miss  Chatterwits'  hand,  as  she  thrust 
half  a  dozen  long  pins  into  the  unresist 
ing  cushion. 

On  this  important  day  when  Miss 
Theodora  began  to  feel  a  change  of 
heart  toward  Eugenie,  she  sat  down  to 
help  Miss  Chatterwits  with  her  work. 

"There's  a  morning  paper,"  said  the 
seamstress.  "Tom  Fetchum  handed  it 
to  me  on  his  way  down  town;  said  he 
had  read  it  all  but  the  deaths  and  mar 
riages,  which  he  knew  I'd  like  to  see.  I 
ain't  had  time  to  look  at  it  yet,  so  you 


MISS  THEODORA          239 

might  read  them  to  me,  Miss  Theo 
dora." 

Miss  Theodora,  putting  on  her 
glasses,  turned  to  the  appointed  place. 

"Not  a  soul  I  know  among  those 
deaths !  I'm  disappointed,"  said  Miss 
Chatterwits,  after  Miss  Theodora  had 
read  the  list.  "Why,  what  is  it?"  she 
added ;  for  Ernest's  aunt  was  looking  up 
with  a  curiously  dazed  expression,  as 
she  handed  the  paper  to  Miss  Chatter- 
wits,  and  pointed  to  a  brief  notice : 

"KURTZ— DIGBY.— At  Troy,  N. 
Y.,  on  the  24th  inst.,  by  Rev.  John 
Brown,  Eugenie,  daughter  of  Simon 
Kurtz  of  Boston,  to  Ralph,  son  of  the 
late  Stuart  Digby  of  the  same  city." 

"Well,  I  never!"  said  Miss  Chatter- 
wits.  "An  elopement,  I  do  believe! 
I'm  glad  I'm  most  through  this  skirt, 
so's  I  can  run  over  to  Mrs.  Fetchum's 
and  tell  her.  I  guess  she  didn't  read  the 
paper  very  carefully  this  morning.  If 
she'd  seen  it  she'd  'a'  been  over  here  to 


240          MISS  THEODORA 

find  out  how  we  took  it.  It's  always 
safe  to  read  the  papers. 

"Well,  how  do  you  feel,  Miss  Theo 
dora?"  she  asked  at  last. 

But  Miss  Theodora  never  told  any 
one  exactly  how  she  felt  when  she  heard 
of  the  strange  ending  of  Ernest's  love 
affair.  To  Ernest,  of  course,  she  gave  a 
full  measure  of  sympathy;  and  she  was 
almost  sorry  that,  as  things  had  turned 
out,  he  would  never  know  that  she  had 
made  up  her  mind  to  make  Eugenie's 
acquaintance.  Since  she  had,  though 
for  only  a  brief  time,  almost  changed  her 
point  of  view,  she  felt  herself  to  be  hypo 
critical  in  receiving  his  praise  for  her 
acumen :  "You  knew  better  than  I  what 
she  was  like." 

Kate  was  indignant  at  her  brother's 
treachery. 

"I  shall  never  forgive  him  for  deceiv 
ing  Ernest  so.  But  I  can't  say  that  I'm 
surprised.  I  knew  that  she  and  Ralph 
had  had  a  great  flirtation  even  before 


MISS  THEODORA          241 

she  met  Ernest.  It  was  that  which  made 
me  so  unwilling  to  call  on  her.  But  I 
never  thought  that  Ralph  would  marry 
her.  Mamma,  I  believe,  is  going  to  re 
ceive  her  as  if  everything  had  been  per 
fectly  above  board.  But  I  know  it's  only 
pride  that  leads  her  to  take  this  stand. 
She  really  feels  the  whole  thing  very 
keenly." 

Ben,  when  he  heard  of  the  elopement, 
could  not  help  recalling  the  episode  of 
the  stolen  skates,  and  he  wondered  if 
Ralph  had  made  love  to  Eugenie  from 
the  mischievous  motives  by  which  he 
had  so  often  in  their  boyhood  allowed 
himself  to  be  influenced  against  Ernest. 
If  so,  he  was  likely  to  be  the  meter  out 
of  his  own  punishment.  For  a  bride 
stolen  merely  to  annoy  another  person 
is  likely  to  make  more  trouble  than  any 
other  stolen  possession. 

Strangely  enough,  Ernest  himself 
recovered  most  quickly  from  the  morti 
fication  of  the  whole  affair.  There  was 


242          MISS  THEODORA 

at  first  the  shock  to  his  pride,  mingled 
with  contempt  for  the  deceit  practised 
on  him  by  Ralph  and  Eugenie.  But  he 
was  so  young  as  to  recover  quickly,  and 
the  element  of  contempt  helped  him  to 
brush  the  whole  matter  aside. 

You,  perhaps,  may  think  less  well  of 
Ernest  for  finding  consolation  so  read 
ily,  but  you  must  remember  that  he 
never  was  a  sentimentalist.  Moreover, 
neither  you  nor  I  may  know  exactly 
what  the  workings  of  his  mind  may  have 
been.  Doubtless  there  was  many  a 
sleepless  night,  and  many  a  bitter  tear, 
before  he  was  ready  to  show  a  stern 
front  to  the  world.  In  Boston  it  might 
have  been  a  much  harder  thing  for  him 
to  bear  the  blow  which  fate  had  leveled 
at  him.  After  all,  Massachusetts  and 
Colorado  are  far  apart ;  and  if  propin 
quity  is  fate  bearing,  distance  and  separ 
ation  are  more  destructive  of  sentimental 
illusions  than  the  average  sentimentalist 
admits.  In  Ernest's  case,  hard  work 


MISS  THEODORA          243 

was  absorbing,  and  even  Grace  Easton, 
William  Easton's  pretty  young  daugh 
ter,  was  a  long  time  in  winning  the  place 
which  she  afterward  held  in  his  heart. 


XXVI. 

You  who  look  at  the  simple  events 
which  I  have  been  relating  (from  the 
outside  and  at  a  distance)  may  have 
other  criticisms  to  make  of  Ernest.  You 
may  think  it  impossible  that  a  youth  so 
well  placed,  as  he  was  at  Harvard, 
should  have  turned  his  back  upon  its 
paths  of  pleasantness  for  the  narrower 
way  that  meant  so  much  hard  work.  Yet 
Ernest  had  not  allowed  himself  to  be  led 
or  governed  by  an  illusion.  In  the 
whole  world  the  serious  student,  the 
man  who  has  his  own  way  to  make,  can 
find  no  better  opportunity  than  at  Har 
vard.  No  one  could  realize  this  better 


MISS  THEODORA          245 

than  Ernest  himself,  in  that  time  of 
storm  and  stress  when  he  had  felt  that 
the  chart  of  his  life  must  be  mapped  out 
by  his  own  hand.  But  his,  he  saw,  was 
a  special  case,  and  the  surest  way  to  free 
himself  from  all  entanglements  and  to 
place  himself  at  the  command  of  duty, 
was,  he  thought,  to  start  out  on  an  en 
tirely  new  course.  It  was  his  Puritan 
inheritance,  this  devotion  to  duty  when 
once  duty  had  shown  clearly  her  kindly 
but  resolute  visage. 

Yet  my  story  has  been  ill  told  if  it 
has  seemed  to  be  more  the  story  of  Er 
nest  than  of  Miss  Theodora.  For  very 
few  of  us  does  life  hold  any  marked  sur 
prises,  any  startling  events.  A  whole 
life  is  often  merely  the  summary  of  many 
very  commonplace  happenings.  Its  real 
events  are  more  likely  to  be  those  moral 
crises  when  the  soul  must  put  itself  in 
harmony  with  all  those  external  happen 
ings  which  it  has  no  power  to  control. 
Nor  is  it  one  of  the  least  of  life's  lessons 


246          MISS  THEODORA 

that  it  would  be  indeed  a  fatal  gift,  if  it 
were  ours  —  this  longed  for  power  to 
turn  the  tide  of  events. 

Take,  for  example,  the  case  of  Miss 
Theodora;  what  a  feeble  figure  she  had 
been  in  her  efforts  to  turn  the  current  of 
affairs  that  made  up  her  life.  How  help 
less  her  will  to  accomplish  her  desires! 

If  John  had  not  married  Dorothy — if 
Ernest  had  been  willing  to  take  his 
grandfather's  profession  —  if  he  had 
never  met  Eugenie — if  he  and  Kate  had 
never  cared  for  each  other,  —  with  all 
these  "ifs"  turned  into  verities,  how  dif 
ferent,  Miss  Theodora  thought,  had 
been  her  outlook  on  life.  But  we,  who 
regard  these  things  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  impartial  onlooker,  know 
that  the  fulfilling  of  her  desires  would 
not  have  made  her  happiness,  nor  for  the 
happiness  of  her  nephew. 

If  in  trying  to  show  you  this  I  have 
seemed  to  dwell  too  long  on  the  ordi 
nary  happenings  in  a  simple  life,  remem- 


MISS  THEODORA          247 

ber  that  these,  after  all,  were  not  the 
things  which  I  count  of  chief  import 
ance. 

To  me  the  great  events  in  Miss  Theo 
dora's  life  were  those  three  occasions 
when  she  had  to  summon  her  strength 
to  great  decisions.  These  soul  crises 
counted  for  more  than  any  other  hap 
penings  in  her  life.  First,  there  was  that 
struggle  when  she  had  to  choose  be 
tween  her  lover  and  her  nephew;  then, 
almost  as  severe,  though  different  in 
kind,  the  battle  in  which  at  last  she  had 
given  in  to  Ernest  in  his  choice  of  a  pro 
fession;  and  last,  although  it  had  had 
no  outward  result,  her  merging  of  her 
own  prejudice  against  Eugenie  in  a 
readiness  to  do  what  would  probably 
make  Ernest  happier. 

Hardly  less  bitter  than  these  three 
struggles  was  the  one  which  Miss  Theo 
dora  waged  to  decide  whether  or  not  it 
was  her  duty  to  join  Ernest  in  the  West. 
At  last  she  yielded  in  this  more  quickly 


248          MISS  THEODORA 

though  with  greater  pain  than  in  the 
two  cases  when  she  had  given  in  to  Er 
nest  about  Harvard  and  about  Eugenie. 

She  left  Boston  with  the  less  reluct 
ance,  perhaps,  because  of  certain 
changes  —  some  persons  called  them 
"improvements" — that  had  begun  to  ap 
pear  in  her  well-loved  West  End.  The 
tall  apartment  houses  which  had  begun 
to  creep  in  even  before  she  left  the  city, 
the  electric  cars  now  dashing  through 
Charles  street,  were  innovations  that  cut 
her  to  the  heart. 

The  breaking  up  of  her  modest  little 
home  soon  followed. 

"You  will  spend  half  of  every  year 
with  us,"  said  Kate,  now  pleasantly  sit 
uated  in  a  house  whose  western  windows 
overlooked  the  river.  She  had  already 
begun  to  make  life  pleasant  for  Ben's 
sisters,  one  of  whom  was  always  staying 
with  her. 

"That  will  depend  upon  Ernest,"  Miss 
Theodora  had  answered,  smiling.  As  a 


MISS  THEODORA          249 

matter  of  fact,  she  did  not  return  to  Bos 
ton,  even  for  a  visit,  until  after  Ernest's 
marriage;  and  so  with  her  removal  to 
Colorado,  her  story  —  as  a  West  End 
story — may  be  said  to  end. 

But  if  I  should  tell  you  more  about 
Miss  Theodora,  I  would  describe  the  de 
lightful  New  England  home  which,  with 
Diantha's  help,  she  made  for  Ernest  in 
Denver.  Nor  would  I  be  able  to  omit 
telling  of  the  romance  which  came  into 
her  own  life. 

At  first  she  tried  to  avoid  meeting 
William  Easton,  now  a  widower ;  but  ef 
forts  of  this  kind,  of  course,  were  use 
less.  They  met  calmly  enough;  and  as 
they  talked  together,  the  years  that  had 
passed  seemed  as  nothing;. 

"So  you  have  come  West,  after  all, 
Theodora — and  for  Ernest's  sake,  too, 
though  it  was  for  his  sake  you  refused  to 
come  so  long  ago." 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "for  Ernest's  sake  it 
seems,  though  when  I  see  how  much  he 


250          MISS  THEODORA 

owes  to  you,  I  realize  that  you  are  more 
than  kind — almost  cruelly  kind — " 

Then  William  Easton,  smiling  some 
what  sadly,  said  nothing  in  reply, 
though  indeed  there  was  no  need  of 
words.  We  all  know  how  a  story  of  this 
kind  ends  in  books ;  and  even  in  real  life 
old  lovers  sometimes  renew  the  pledges 
of  youth. 

(The  End.) 


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